Ding
A reader on the Abu Muqawama blog gets it: “If Israel doesn’t perform up to expectations, talk is about how poorly Israel performed. When Israel routs an opponent, then Israel is the bully, and everyone talks about that.” Israel can’t win. Citizens of the world call for Israel, but not Hamas, to cease its fire. Israel does so, and the rockets predictably continue, now with an added justification, namely the continued presence of Israeli soldiers on Gazan territory. If Israel does nothing, Hamas and its cheerleaders will claim that the resistance has won. In a conflict which is often dominated by perception, this is crucial. Who’d be an Israeli policymaker?
These difficulties shouldn’t mean we let Israel’s current crop of leaders off lightly. It was never going to be difficult to improve on the mistakes of the Second Lebanon War. Our leading trio, though, disappointed. At the beginning things looked more promising, although I suppose they always do. A concise operation with clearly defined objectives, an understanding that there was only so much we could do at this stage in time, with the military and political echelons working in tandem to stave off drift. But drift is what we got; the soldiers left aimlessly in the field without a diplomatic plan for their removal. Ehud Olmert, who looked remarkably statesman-like at the beginning (when’s the last time we were able to say that about an Israeli Prime Minister?), ended up foolishly boasting about how he got Bush to scupper Rice’s Security Council resolution. With the world already obsessed over the idea that Zionists control American foreign policy, this wasn’t a clever move.
Israel predictably lost the battle for hearts and minds. This was inevitable from the outset, following the government’s decision to prevent journalists from entering Gaza. Hamas duly shaped public perception. As if that wasn’t enough, our artillery unit once again excelled itself, with its final criminal blunder of the war resulting in the death of three children of a makeshift Israeli television correspondent, live on air. If you’re consoled by the thought that this abject stupidity gives lie to the notion that we deliberately target civilians, imagine what you’d be thinking if your kids were lying under the rubble.
As the famous American soldier John Paul Vann writes, “This is a political war and it calls for discrimination in killing. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I’m afraid we can’t do it that way. The worst is an airplane. The next worst is artillery. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle – you know who you’re killing.” There is an unintended irony in his words, written long before this conflict: carrying out an operation like this less than two months before an election politicises the fighting even further. The brutal truth is that we fought callously hard, which is why there have been so many civilian casualties. As Haaretz noted at the weekend, the ‘Buchris’ method has reigned supreme, with Barak and Livni terrified of the electoral consequences of a high Israeli bodycount (Ehud Olmert has no such worries; hence his greater enthusiasm for taking the fight deep into Gaza City). This, I suppose, is a case of trying to have your cake and eat it, which will be of little consolation to the Palestinians whose lives have been ruined. Still, given how the world reacted to Operation Defensive Shield (with its “disproportionate” ratio of 29 Israel soldiers dead to 50-60 Palestinians, most of them militants), the incentive to ease up was never great to begin with.
On the bright side, we’ve managed to stop everything in time for Obama’s swearing in, although no-one thinks the ceasefire will last for long (it’s already been broken, of course, but if we counted these transgressions the word ceasefire itself would soon fade from the lexicon). Greater mechanisms – at least on a technocratic level – are being put in place to stop the arms smuggling, but without a deal to ensure the steady supply of humanitarian goods to Gaza, not to mention a prisoner exchange, there is no hope of a real long-term arrangement between Israel and Hamas. As for a real peace, while Hamas maintains its rejectionism, this remains an impossibility.
All that’s left is to ask is who won, a less callous question than it might at first appear. Of course, the real losers are – once again – Palestinian civilians. But in asking who won between Israel and Hamas, we can begin to make some assessments regarding what might happen the next time around. “But did Hamas really lose much?” another reader on Abu Muquwama asks. “That seems to be all that Hamas needed to do, is not be wiped off the map, and let public outrage harm Israel’s reputation and keep support going for them. Then, when Israel leaves, Hamas reemerges.” Or, “Israel keeps losing more and more moral credibility with every step it takes, Hamas doesn’t have any credibility to begin with so it can’t lose that.” Hamas is deep in its pit, luring us in. All we have is a military policy, which means we’re not aware of the tremendous political damage our actions are doing on the ground. As I said at the top of this piece, our dilemmas are acute, awful even. But they are not irresolvable. When we finally elect a government that will present a political plan that gives clear and present promise to everyone living between the river and the sea, the evil decree may be averted. If not, all is gloom.
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good post Alex.
Very interesting.
Thanks fellas.
Alex. What I don’t like about your writing is the accents. I used to be like you – trying to criticize Israel but not too harshly, putting the accents in all the wrong places. For example, reading your post, the impression is that all the civilian casualties from the operation were regrettable mistakes, while in truth there so much evidence that in many cases civilians were either targeted deliberately or were “discounted” from the very beginning (and I am not even talking about wiping out the graduating ceremony of the policemen), and that UN installations were also targeted deliberately. You say that if only Israel allowed journalists to enter Gaza, the world would have seen a different picture. This is illogical: Israel prevented journalists from Gaza specifically for the world not to see that things were even worse than it guessed they were.
Btw, your numbers of casualties for Defensive Shield are nonsensical. 50-60 dead were only in Jenin, although even these numbers are anybody’s guess: who knows how many were leveled by Kurdi BEar’s D-9? All the international observers visiting Jenin afterwards described a scene of total destruction with the smell of rotten flesh in the air.
Peter – I was very clear in my words, which included “criminal” and “abject stupidity”. I also emphasised that distinctions of intent are – rightly – of no interest to bereaved Palestinians. But I am not willing to accept those who would ascribe genocidal motives to Israeli actions. The civilian casualties were the result of a decision to “shoot first, ask questions later”, so as to avoid too many bodybags so close to the election. If that isn’t awful enough for you, I can only apologise.
As for Jenin, the official Palestinian investigation put the bodycount at 56. On the 1st May, the Washington Post reported the following: “The Palestinians had suggested that most of the bodies were buried beneath the rubble of houses bulldozed by Israeli troops. No digging for bodies was taking place here, and there was no stench that could have come from decaying human flesh.” Does the fact that the bodycount was so greatly inflated hold no significance for you?
The real losers are also Israelis. Those who live, and it appears, will continue to live under the constant threat of indiscriminate rocket attacks, as well, the soldiers who risked their lives (not to mention the wounded and those who actually lost their lives – and their families) for an operation that had nothing going for it – no real strategy other than “we can’t stand this anymore.”
That is a valid enough reason for an operation – but that doesn’t absolve the government of coming up with an appropriate strategy and well-defined goals. Tactics were much improved over Lebanon, but as you said: “It was never going to be difficult to improve on the mistakes of the Second Lebanon War.”
And what now? In a very short week, we will back to square one. Alex, you and I probably disagree on what should be done, but we can probably agree that not much was truly achieved. After all, back to the beginning of your post, in the eyes of the world, “Israel can’t win.”
I think the obvious question now is – what’s next? Who knows… מאן טראכט און גוט לאכט (man plans and g-d laughs)
OK, Alex, I can see that you are very upset about Israel’s action but are not ready to make the next leap to realize that some of the civilians were targeted deliberately. I am not saying in every case, but in many cases there I can see no other explanation. I don’t believe this is an overreaching IDF policy – the COS doesn’t give orders saying “kill as many as possible” or something like that; rather, these things
(a) take place on lower levels, with company and battalion and maybe even higher-up commanders giving effectively orders to shoot at anything that moves or doesn’t move (shock and awe, sort of)
(b) condoned by the top echelon of IDF and the government. I.e., any soldier or commander knows that chances that he will be ever persecuted for war crimes are nil. In fact, the top echelon gives silent – not official – “OK” to the murderous orders given by the lower echelon.
You see, for IDF to have a right to call itself the most moral army in the world in this circumstances, there would have to be an intense and deliberate effort to explain to the soldiers to stick to the purity of arms. I am sure nobody went through workshops where they emphasized the fact that Israel is going to act among the densest civilian population in the world and that it needs to act with utmost care. The opposite clearly took place. For example, taking out Ryan with all his family (a deliberate killing of civilians) and other instances like that can send only one signal to anybody in the field: all bets are off, kill, kill, kill.
Now, I know I am not there in the field, I am an “armchair warrior” here in the US; it is very easy for me to criticize and I cannot be sure what’s going on in practice. But I know enough about how the army works and what it is to be a soldier to realize that in the situation in which IDF finds itself in Gaza with blood rushing to the brain and the utmost goal to have as few soldiers killed as possible, without a major effort to drill into every single head the importance of protecting the lives of the civilians, there would be cases of of deliberate killings. And without active prosecutions of such cases – and this eroded in the last decade to the point where soldiers kill Palestinians with practical impunity – the situation will only get worse with every new operation and war.
For me, and I believe a lot of people around the world, the watershed moment was not the killing of the three daughters of that nice doctor, but rather the Zeytun story, with children starving for days next to the corpses of their parents and soldiers preventing Red Cross from reaching the house and then after three days not even letting the RC use its ambulances. If Israel does not prosecute war crimes like this – and it won’t – the total disintegration of morals of IDF will continue unabated.
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RE: Jenin, suppose the body count of 50-60; you used the number as if this was the bodycount of the whole op. Defensive Shield. A huge number of the dead 29 IDF soldiers – 13, as far as I remember – came from a single ambush of a reserves unit in Jenin. The total number of the Palestinians dead was something like 500.
Of course the fact that the bodycount was inflated is important. It only confirms that one should not listen to anybody’s propaganda and that independent observers on the ground are of utmost importance (they actually helped Israel in this case.) This is why I think that Israel not letting the press into Gaza was not a matter of stupidity but of deliberate attempts at cover-up. I hope not, but we might learn even more horrific things out of Gaza in the near future.
Peter, I’m prepared to accept that in some cases civilians may have been targeted, and your explanations for why this has happened are reasonable. The point is that’s very different from a blanket claim that “Israel targets civilians”, and the distinction is important.
As for Defensive Shield casualties, I should have made it clear that I was only referring to Jenin.
“But I know enough about how the army works and what it is to be a soldier to realize that in the situation in which IDF finds itself in Gaza with blood rushing to the brain and the utmost goal to have as few soldiers killed as possible, without a major effort to drill into every single head the importance of protecting the lives of the civilians, there would be cases of of deliberate killings.”
You mean soldiers who care more about their own lives than about protecting civilians who are indistinguishable from the people you are fighting? I don’t doubt for a second that soldiers could have prevented more civilian deaths if they were willing to sacrifice themselves to do so. However, this is such an absurd ideal that no one will ever in any war, do. So many people (not you, but many people in general) believe that war is like a video game where you can easily and calmly pick people out in the crowd and take them down with one shot-even better a shot to the wrist to dislodge their weapon and then arrest them. This type of warfare is, in reality, chaos. And I have no doubt that if anyone were creeping through tight streets under constant threat, they would shoot sooner than they theoretically should. The problem I have with all these war crime claims is not that there weren’t any war crimes. I was not there so I don’t know. It’s that only with Israel does the war crimes cry seem to break out. Russia is a member of the ICC and will never face any sort of repercussions for obvious massive human rights crimes in Chechnya, nobody in the US or the UK have faced or will face any trials over Iraq and on and on…
When in history do these modern laws for war take place anyway? Certainly after the Second World War as there were never thousands of British war criminals languishing in jail for war crimes. How many French were tried for the deaths of 700, 000 Algerians in the 50′s and 60′s? (not to mention torture, deliberate civilian murders, etc…).
Good post… Slightly puerile start (Poooor Israel!) but mostly agreeable, IMHO.
Gabriel, absolutely, war is not a video game. And if your goal is to have an absolute safety for your soldiers fighting in a populated area, then there is really no way you are not going to kill scores of innocents. That’s why this war was criminal in intent – both because alternatives were not tried and because it cannot achieve the (unstated) goals of stopping the Qassams, destroying/weakening Hamas and other such nonsense (at least nobody pretended like one of the goals was freeing Gilad Shalit, phew!). It could only achieve the goal of making the Israeli public feel better.
Now, I know that it is frustrating that Israel is being “picked upon” while other powers get away with no lesser, sometimes actually greater war crimes (Russians, for example, solved the problem of resistance in Grozny is a very effective manner: they leveled the city). Now, my reply to this:
(a) I cannot care about what others are doing like I care about my people. If there are criminals going unpunished out there, it is bad, but it doesn’t justify my brother turning into a criminal.
(b) The world is aghast at Gaza also because they see a largely defenseless population (living in squalor for 60 years first and foremost because of the State of Israel) being ruthlessly bombarded with the most effective war technologies. Coming with a plane over a populated area when the people not only do not have weapons to protect themselves, they don’t even have shelters to run to, is obscene. At least in WWII there were air defenses and shelters in the bombed cities.
(c) It would be nice if Israel at least admitted that war crimes were committed and investigate at least some of those and severely punish the perpetrators. Americans, for example, reluctantly punish some of the war crimes in Iraq; not enough, but still… And it would be nice if Israel abandoned its habit of shouting on every corner about having the most moral army in the world and being a light onto the nations in general. People, in addition to being naturally upset about scenes like those from Gaza, tend also to be resentful to the chutzpah of hypocrisy of Israeli hasbara.
Again, I don’t condone crimes committed by others, but let’s clean our house first before pointing fingers to anybody else. “If I am not for myself, who [will be] for me?”, as Hillel said. Otherwise progress towards justice would never be possible.
Good analysis, Alex.
However, the implication that all civilian casualties can be traced to Israeli ‘stupidity’ rather than anything more deliberate or anticipated is dubious, and I think you were right to qualify this later. Genocidal intent is a straw man – of course this is a false claim (not to make of Hamas, of course!), no one could seriously suggest that and remain credible. But there is evidence that civilians were, in some cases, deliberately targeted, and that there might have been a policy of, if certainly not maximising civilian casualties, recklessly endangering civilian life to highlight the consequences of continued rockets. Certainly you were too quick to draw conclusions here with possible UN investigations pending. I don’t think you can just ascribe casualties to incompetence, even if that’s part of the explanation.
Gabriel – again, your standards are not very high.
“You mean soldiers who care more about their own lives than about protecting civilians who are indistinguishable from the people you are fighting? I don’t doubt for a second that soldiers could have prevented more civilian deaths if they were willing to sacrifice themselves to do so. However, this is such an absurd ideal that no one will ever in any war, do.”
The first line, generously, could mean “in the chaos of battle”. This should be a reason for seeking out all alternatives to hand-to-hand combat in such a densely populated environment. Or it could mean – this could be unfair, apologies if it is- a failure to distinguish between Palestinians, that they’re “all the same”. Surely you don’t endorse this view? Would you accept the same lack of discrimination for Israelis, thus rendering civilians legitimate targets?
As for the absurd ideal, soldiers have more of a choice than civilians, so, yes, they should be prepared to take more risks. That’s what you ask of soldiers – they take risks to protect civilian life, and not just those of your “own side”. I’m sure you can find plenty of examples from Israeli military history of occasions when soldiers have done exactly that. Certainly that ideal is proclaimed enough by IDF spokesmen.
“living in squalor for 60 years first and foremost because of the State of Israel”
So **poof** Israel is a state and they live in ‘squalor’? What, may I ask, was their life like before 1948? And do you blame Israel for how the Egyptians handled the territory from 1948 to 1967? Out of curiousity, what does the world bank say about the area’s economy/infrastructure from 1967 to 1987?
Just curious as you seem to be insinuating that their lives are shit because of Israel’s existence -
Avrum, I don’t know enough about how they lived prior to 1948 and it is irrelevant. In fact, from what I did read, the Palestinians had one of the most advanced agrarian societies in the world. One day I am going to read Baruch Kimmerling and others and know more. These pictures may give some little idea, maybe. Regardless, what difference does it make?
Re from 48 to 67 – you may know that most of the population of Gaza consists of refugees from the Nakba as well as those deported in the years of the military administration in the 50s. Thus, regardless of how Egypt treated them, the fact that Israel did not let the refugees return to their homes in contravention of international law and explicit UN resolutions – and, to add insult to injury, continued to expel people from their homes, puts onus for their conditions on Israel in those years too.
So, yes, their life is shit first and foremost because of Israel (I did not say “only” and I did not say “Israel’s existence” – these are your interpretations).
Again, re: deliberate targeting of civilians. While it is clear that in some cases civilians were killed because of (a) “regrettable mistakes”, (b)the army not being careful enough to protect civilians (c)deliberately discounting civilians as collateral damage (these all somehow seen as less than war crimes by some), there are enough evidence to suggest deliberate targeting by sadistic individuals, like the case described by Richard Silverstein and in fact many other cases in the past (just some examples here and here). We can not pretend we are talking about a few bad apples, since these bad apples are never punished (the few cases where punishments are so ridiculously lenient don’t count.) Rather, we are talking about a practice condoned and covered up by the commanders in the field, as well as the top brass.
Seen in the larger context of condoning and even encouraging settler violence – a process that also did not start yesterday – these suggest a society that lost its moral compass.
Couldn’t find it in English yet (it might take another day before they translate it) but in Haaretz Hebrew edition Harel and Issacharoff talk about the operations as a “redeeming experience” for IDF after the failure in Lebanon. They talk about the “dull senses” of the soldiers and commanders, who, on orders from the top echelon destroyed “dozens of houses” not because they were a source of any hostile activity, but rather because they “interfered with the field of view”. They talk about total apathy in the eyes of the IDF soldiers and commanders towards the lives of the Palestinians, even greater than the one exhibited in Defensive Shield. They even hint that the killing of 7 civilians in the UNRWA school back in 2004 was a revenge for two children who died from Kassam in Shderot.
Now, as one of the talkbackers rightfully notes at the bottom of the page, “any idiot with hundreds of planes and tanks and such orders would have “won” there!”
Israel today is quite comfortable with seeing itself as a ruthless bully that won’t stop at anything to achieve its goals, “right or wrong”. A far cry from the vision of an enlightened nation that will serve a lights unto the gentiles.
“the army not being careful enough to protect civilians”.
Peter D – seriously?! What is being careful enough? First, it is important to note that no other military has done as much to avoid harming civilians. Second, the solution is not simply avoiding military goals because of regrettable civilian deaths. If a target is a legitimate military target, then what do you propose? Simply avoiding war is nice in theory, but sometimes war is a necessity, and people die. It is sad, but to claim that the IDF is not being careful enough is an indictment of every single military in the world, bar none.
LB, please, care to actually read all my comments above, I think it will answer your questions.
There are red lines in wars and crossing them is considered “war crimes”. Failure to protect civilian population in conflicts can be a war crime, depending on the circumstances. Trying to kill a single fighter with absolute certainty of killing a large number of civilians is a war crime in most cases (one can come up with a theoretical examples of when it would be justified – if, say, this fighter had a finger on a nuclear device or other such nonsense.) It is telling that just several years ago Israel claimed in the wake of the Shehade assassination that had it known that all the buildings surrounding his were occupied with civilians it would have called off the operation; yet, just a couple of weeks ago it took out Ryan with all his family in precisely the same circumstances and nobody spoke of the apparent shift in standards (not that a lot of people bought the original claim).
Now, where do you get this “it is important to note that no other military has done as much to avoid harming civilians”? Any substance behind this claim? It may be so, it might not be. I did not do a lot of research into the practices of other armies. Should I accept your blank statement of maybe this one from a US marine claiming that what Israel does in Gaza is much worse that what Americans do in more dangerous situations in Iraq? I also cannot care how other countries behave at wars the same as I care about Israel, see my comment above.
That sometimes wars are necessary is a truism and I don’t need to be taught that. This was an unnecessary war. And even in necessary wars there are still rules of war codified in Geneva conventions.
“Avrum, I don’t know enough about how they lived prior to 1948 and it is irrelevant. In fact, from what I did read, the Palestinians had one of the most advanced agrarian societies in the world.”
My name is Avram.
Then how can you base an honest comparison on how life is today if you don’t how life was a) between prior to Israel’s existence b) 1948-1967 under Egyptian rule or c) 1967-1987 (until the first Intifada where it started to steadily decline)?
Advanced Agrarian societies in the world? Care to back that up with some really solid sources? Or like other sources I’ve read, they include, “all” of the region’s agrarian capabilities, including the Jewish population’s agrarian productivity too.
“you may know that most of the population of Gaza consists of refugees from the Nakba as well as those deported in the years of the military administration in the 50s. Thus, regardless of how Egypt treated them, the fact that Israel did not let the refugees return to their homes in contravention of international law and explicit UN resolutions”
And you may know that until 1990s, Israel consisted mostly of Jews from the Nakba too, where more human beings were expelled, lost far far more in assets & land LARGER than the state of Israel. Do you also know that a Palestinian refugee can NOT get asylum anywhere in the Arab world … I wonder why? How about the fact the UN screwed up the refugee camps in the late 1940s and early 1950s by a) allowing many poor people in there who were NOT refugees and b) having two definitions of the word refugee, thus inflating it greatly. It was a totally different reality in the 1950s – bringing back those refugees, especially the ones who never saw an Israeli soldier but hoped the Arab League would succeed in their wild threats, was an impossibility. We both know that –
“So, yes, their life is shit first and foremost because of Israel”
Would it have been different in 1947 had the Arabs not being anti-partition? Would it have been different had the Arab world treated their refugees at least slightly similar to how Israel treated their own refugees?
Would it have been different had the Arab world wanted to take care of their own at all?
Israel has obviously caused a lot of the issues here – but the Arabs are equally to blame. Unless of course you blame this on Israel’s existence, and since you express you don’t, then either you’re extremely biased or something else motivates you.
Alex, Israel is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t for one essential reason: it is wrong in its very core. Israel was created by stealing Palestinian land and shedding Palestinian blood, has been expanded by stealing more Palestinian land and shedding more Palestinian blood. Now it has to deal with the consequences of its actions, but the only way it knows how to do that is by stealing more land and shedding more blood. That is the core issue stripped of niceties and sophistry.
There is no way for Israel to be right because morally it can’t be. Your only long-term hope is to do what Europeans did to the native Americans: massacre them until only a handful of them are left in small reservations where they keep quiet. But Israel will still be wrong.
Avram, say no to drugs. You are obviously delusional and only know your history from the “We must defend Israel at any cost” textbook you studied with your Anti-Defamation League colleagues.
I can’t be bothered to deal with your drug-fuelled rant because you are obviously so detached from reality that I doubt you would listen even if Moses came back to earth and spoke to you directly.
Mature response from Daniel there – well in there.
If you want to point out where I was factually incorrect, please go ahead. If you have any issues with the questions, let me know.
I’m fully capable of saying, “Israel is wrong”, “Israel has screwed up here n’ here n’ here” but I cannot stand the “Israel is the ONLY ONE doing wrong” … It takes two to tango, care to dance?
Daniel – does that mean that America is also wrong?
Avram (sorry for the typo before)
I was not making comparisons. I was talking about Israel’s responsibility for the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza. If Israel did not expel hundreds of thousands of people there, did not occupy and strangle and blockade etc for decades, and they lived like shit, that would not have been Israel’s responsibility. But we’d never know. Because Israel did all these things. What you are trying to say is no materially different from killing a person and then saying that the person was going to die anyway.
The Jews coming from the Arab states is such a standard hasbara smoke screen tactic and hardly deserves wasting breath. Even if I accepted your description of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries as refugees from Nakba, it would still not make any sense to justify your crimes with crimes committed by others (especially, since the others were not the Palestinians; the Palestinians and the Arab armies did ethnically cleanse Jews in 1948, but only about 10,000 of them.)
Regarding the refugees and inflating numbers etc. Maybe so, to some extent. Not enough to change the basic truth on the ground, which is hundreds of thousands of refugees and now millions of their children.
I am not an Arab and will not teach them how to treat their refugees or make judgment about it because it is irrelevant. I believe that Jews in general are much more cosmopolitan and have less attachment to the land, for historical reasons, than Arabs. Thus it is easier for us to change countries, accept refuge in other places etc. Palestinian families are still holding keys to their nonexistent bustans and houses and are ready to live generation after generation in refugee camps so that eventually to return to their homeland. I am awed by it even though I don’t and cannot feel the same way. In my value system the Arab countries with several exceptions treated the Palestinian refugees very badly, but it is none of my business and is irrelevant to Israel’s responsibility towards those.
It might have. We will never know. I know that if I were a Palestinian in those years I would be mad as hell for some colonists coming to occupy my land and then some other people taking half of it and giving away stuff that belongs to me to somebody else. Pragmatically, maybe I’d see that the other side is stronger and maybe it’d be better to give up and resign to the injustice in order to have at least something. But on emotional and moral level I’d be pissed and probably fight this injustice. What you’re saying is “why won’t they just shut up while we’re raping them so that we both can enjoy it”.
Again your diversion tactic. Yes, both sides have responsibility for the situation. But (a) Israel has a much greater responsibility and (b) quoting my own comment above:
Here is the piece by Harel and Issacharoff I mentioned earlier in English:
“have less attachment to the land, for historical reasons, than Arabs. Thus it is easier for us to change countries”
How can you honestly say that? Were we not on this land long before the Arabs were? Or is that another ‘Hasbara’ tactic that the Romans kicked us out in 70 CE?
Btw, I saw no comment from you on the ‘Refugee’ definitionS in the UN during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
“some colonists”
Have you studied the #s of the Arab villages in the 1930s and 1940s? Did they not expand drastically, some at over 100%? Are those ‘natives’, or colonists too?
I think what this boils down to, and you can please correct me if I’m wrong, is that you feel we have no right to have a country here.
“Again your diversion tactic”
That wasn’t directed at you, but at Daniel, the mighty Palestinian defender, who decided to talk about my drug habits (I just hope my wife doesn’t happen) in public without my approval! It’s not really a diversion tactic. Notice how no one will rant n’ rave at you for obviously being Pro-Palestinian, but I for posting my post get slammed as a druggie. I wonder why that is …
Avram
You can find my views on this subject in this comment thread. Basically:
a) The view that “Romans kicked us out” is regarded as a myth by absolute most self-respecting historians today (check the references in the comment thread)
b) Even if they did, it gives us no right to demand that people who lived in this place for centuries afterwards just get up and leave or submit to us.
To see better what I mean read the whole discussion in the link above.
And, yes, I believe most Jews are less attached to land than most Arabs. It shouldn’t be controversial at all given that most of us live in exile to this day, change countries relatively easily etc.
I said that maybe there was a case of some false definitions of refugees. I don’t know whether this is the case, nor have seen any reference from you. The fact that I am not aware of any mainstream analyst of the conflict ever raising it as an important point makes me think that it is of a minor importance, if of any at all, as I did state above (“Maybe so, to some extent. Not enough to change the basic truth on the ground, which is hundreds of thousands of refugees and now millions of their children.”) For example, I know Yehoshua Porath believes that there were less than 750,00 refugees from 1948, but even then he doesn’t dispute the numbers are in hundreds of thousands or that this makes any material difference. Btw, many if not most today’s historians also agree there were less than 6 million Jewish victims of Holocaust – more like 4.5 million – but does this really matter? No, it doesn’t.
You mean, expanded as a result of natural growth? Or I am smelling Joan Peters? Debunked, here, by Yehoshua Porath, for example.
I believe we don’t have a right to a country that exists as a result of continuous dispossession and oppression of other people. Israel exists and this is a fact. The question is how to correct historic injustices and prevent future ones. No, having a Jewish state is not the top priority for me. Having the greatest number of people living in peace and justice is.
Didn’t get that. I was talking about you saying “I’m fully capable of saying, “Israel is wrong”[...]“ and me answering Again, I don’t condone crimes committed by others[...]“ etc. Don’t know anything about you, Daniel, drugs and don’t want to know.
I browsed the thread you linked – It’s too long to read now.
“I believe most Jews are less attached to land than most Arabs”
That is your opinion, and you’re fully entitled to it. I don’t agree, but we cannot prove it one way or another, so no point in debating.
“It shouldn’t be controversial at all given that most of us live in exile to this day”
Exile from where?
Apologies about Refugee comment – I missed that.
“I believe we don’t have a right to a country that exists as a result of continuous dispossession and oppression of other people”
Most countries in the world are like that Peter – let’s get realistic, there isn’t onet hat hasn’t oppressed or dispossessed. Do you concur?
“The question is how to correct historic injustices and prevent future ones”
I don’t think historic injustices can ever be ‘fully corrected’. There can major attempts to do so, but none will ever satisfy those pained. On a “Jewish” level (ie It’s one I best relate to), do you think anything the Germans/Europeans/World has done since the Holocaust has corrected what happened? Will it prevent another one (I somehow doubt it)?
“Having the greatest number of people living in peace and justice is.”
A hope … It’s a nice one I think we all would like to have, but you are dealing with human beings here …
“Don’t know anything about you, Daniel, drugs and don’t want to know.”
Sababa, no issues here.
Avram
Yes, so? same logic as “Other people steal so why shouldn’t I”?
You’re right, “correct” is not the right word to use. Restitute, rectify etc, to the extent possible is what I meant. I think Germans did a lot to restitute Jews for the Holocaust both in terms of money and in terms of education of their young generations. Their situation is not the same as here, but if Israel will ever have anywhere near the amount of good will to restitute the Palestinians that the Germans have towards us, I’d be a happy person. Right now most people in Israel either believe that Israel never did anything wrong to the Palestinians or that whatever wrong was done was actually good (“justified”). It’ll require years of education to reverse this despicable situation.
Re another Holocaust, it is a totally useless point to discuss. History in a hundred years is unpredictable. As for the near future, there is no chance of another Holocaust of the type practiced by the Nazis. In any case, Israel is not a guarantee against another Holocaust whichever way you look at it.
In the end, a lot of conversations degenerate to such statements. I can feel that you have enough decency to admit that there is injustice going on, but then you just say: well, that’s the way the world works, so, why bother? I reject such attitudes. There will never be progress towards anything with such attitudes. Recognizing injustices and not fighting them is still criminal. There is a lot that can be done. For example, if enough people in Israel realized that the country was born in sin, covered up for this sin and exacerbated it ever since and that we owe the Palestinians a mighty lot, it’ll be a huge step. Two state solution is probably dead, but we can still build a just bi-national state.
“Their situation is not the same as here,”
That is not really true – the education system changed rather drastically due to Oslo. And I think MOST people can attest to a wrong that was done to our neighbors – anyone who doesn’t is an extremist or just unfortunately not ‘with it’. I assume you also would want the Palestinians to change their education (or the Arab world in general) – Israel can change, but if the other side doesn’t change too, then what good will it do in the long run? nada.
“there is no chance of another Holocaust of the type practiced by the Nazis”
It’s happened in other countries to an extent – so it ‘can’ happen again.
“I can feel that you have enough decency to admit that there is injustice going on, but then you just say: well, that’s the way the world works, so, why bother”
No Peter, I’m a realist. I know there was an injustice done (I hope you acknowledge the wrongs done pre-1948 and during the war itself to the Jews too), I’m not denying that. I also know that since the dawn of time, human beings have being doing this. So to say you hope for ‘peace and justice’ is sadly something I look at as but a hope, and not something I think either of us will ‘see’ practiced by our species in our lifetime.
“Two state solution is probably dead, but we can still build a just bi-national state”
Two state solution wouldn’t work. I assume you’ve studied enough of history of the Arab Jew (not the Moors or Ottomans). No bi-national state will satisfy both sides … Again, that’s just a realistic outlook. A two state solution is still possible – that is the only way, in my opinion, to give the people a long term future together. Otherwise, it’s just going to keep on spiraling the way it has done since the 1920s …
“Two state solution wouldn’t work”
Sorry, I mean bi-national state wouldn’t work.
Not in my experience and not beyond lip service that doesn’t make anybody feel obliged to do anything about it.
Sure, just that I cannot expect them to do so before they get some sort of decent living. To expect the oppressed to be gentle on their oppressors is unrealistic (as a realist you sure understand this). And with all the stink raised in Israel after Tamir tried as much as to put the Green Line into the textbooks… As they say in Russian, “look whose cow is mooing”. (By the way, read this about those famous (but here’s the rub, nonexistent) Palestinian books promoting hate and violence. Read the rest of the blog, too.)
I really don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. That struggle for a just society is futile? Shouldn’t even be tried? What a load of bull, sorry. Tell this to civil rights activists in the US in the 60s. Sure, people like you would sit on their arses and say that this is all just a “hope”, just idealistic chimera. But in 2009 America has a black president.
On the contrary, I suspect that the state that Israel will be able to give the Palestinians (if any) will not satisfy them, 20% or so of their original partition allocation, cut out from the main water and agrarian resources, weak, demilitarized etc. There is a lot of analysis written about this. A lot of people say it is not feasible anymore.
Bi-national state that could arise in Israel, on the other hand, has never been tried (and history is largely irrelevant in this respect). Jews won’t be a small minority but rather about 50% of the population with higher level of education, standard of living etc (at least for the first n years) We are not talking about some Islamic state with Jews living in dhimmitude. If anything, it is the Arabs that will be relatively worse off. And if we’re talking about history, then Jews fared much, much better in Arab countries throughout centuries than in Europe, so, you cannot really draw any conclusions here.
Peter,
You have a lot of links ‘proving’ your points – and while I read them, I do find it rather belittling that you consider all of your sources ‘fact’ and ‘truth’. The Pew Analysis (I think this was the name) also delved into the Arab education system – and their results were also harsh. Btw, part of the Oslo process was to reform the education system (which Israel did, and the PA did not).
“Sure, just that I cannot expect them to do so before they get some sort of decent living.”
So it would have been ok for Jews to teach hatred of others when we were oppressed in another world? Or is this another irrelevant example?
“That struggle for a just society is futile?”
No, I’m not implying that – or suggesting you, or myself, or others don’t puruse it. But again, I don’t see things changing here in my life time – and no matter what you do there or I do here, I doubt I’ll see something (and hopefully I’m wrong) that will make me change my mind.
“Bi-national state that could arise in Israel, on the other hand, has never been tried ”
Just because it hasn’t been tried, doesn’t mean it would work … A proper two state solution hasn’t been tried either, so we really don’t know if that will work. You don’t want a “Jewish State” though (again, correct me if I’m wrong), which is where we’ll always disagree. I want one, I think our nation needs one. I also think they need one too, if anything – to strengthen their ability to recover from the last 60 years.
“And if we’re talking about history, then Jews fared much, much better in Arab countries throughout centuries than in Europe”
And this is relevant how? Because Jews fared better in the Arab world than Europe, it was better? Does that eliminate the ‘conversion’ law of orphaned Jewish kids? Or the massacres that are largely ignored by most? or the many poor/deprived Jews are ‘ok’ because the few who did fare much, much better than their brothers in Europe? Let’s not discount history (as you so claim so many Jews/Israelis do) because of a comparison to Europe’s treatment of the Jews.
Another point re: binational state. This was ‘tried’ technically during the British Mandate, a supposedly neutral party (both sides will argue against that), and both sides struggled (and that’s putting it nicely) to get along.
Avram
No, Avram, I don’t as a rule, but when facts are looking too hard in your face you do. To give you some perspective, I am not some natural born pro-Palestinian defender. I went to serve int eh IDF, became “mur’al”, went to the officers course (communication) and sought to serve in the hottest spot at the time (Eastern Zone of South Lebanon). I served in a combat reserve battalion. I was never a right wing person, but not a left winger either. But then some years ago I started reading things that went against what I thought I knew, what they taught me about the history of the conflict. Not a couple of links here and there, but tons of info. At first, it is a feeling of disbelief, both at the revelations and at myself for being able to justify for myself for all these years the treatment of other people like dirt. A story written by a soldier at a roadblock abusing a Palestinian, who could be his father, brought tears to my eyes. Not because I did not know such stories existed, or didn’t know people in the army capable of such things, but because I was able to suppress and ignore. But even then you keep on living. Hope for the best. Until Israel excels again in crapping on your ideals and you start scratching your head: what’s going on? I watched the Second Lebanon Fiasco in disbelief. The whole country swallowing hook, line, and sinker the lie of destroying Hizballa and bringing back the kidnapped soldiers, all while ignoring that our army was reducing apartment blocks to rubble, bombing the shit out of refugees fleeing to the north on our own orders, covering entire villages in cluster bombs. Yes, my parents in Haifa had to run for the basement and yet I couldn’t sleep waiting for the Sayeret to return safely form Baalbek, but such irrational murderous affairs can break something inside you. In the latest rerun of the same show in Gaza I did not feel any sympathy for IDF – I tried, but I couldn’t summon it.
Anyway, enough of it, I am not here to occupy Alex’s pages with the stories of my awakenings.
You say Israel reformed its education system, how so? Is this some wishful thinking on your part or you can back it up with concrete examples? And besides education, Israeli media did not become any better, if not worse, still the same mouthpieces of the government and the IDF that spew bullshit into the ears of the brainwashed public.
Re: bi-national state. I did not say bi-national state will necessarily work. I hope it will, but indeed there is no guarantee (not to mention that we are years away from it even being a possibility). I do think that for a two-state solution that will be acceptable to the Palestinians, Israel will have to go to a civil war. And I don’t believe Israel is ready to do so. So, the two-state solution, as desirable as it is, is most probably dead. I am not a prophet, but this is how I see things. Read this and this (and other) post by the Magnes Zionist to better understand my perspective.
Re: the Jews in the Arab countries, you say “And this is relevant how?” First, I myself said “you cannot really draw any conclusions here”, meaning that the relevancy is marginal if any. I was pointing out that if your justification for the impossibly of coexistence of Jews and Arabs in a single state is the history of Jews living in Arab (or Muslim) countries, then it is a pretty lame one, since it was actually much better than in Europe, and few people would say that Jews and Europeans cannot live in a single state. Second, read your own sentence and tell me if it makes sense: “Because Jews fared better in the Arab world than Europe, it was better?” Of course if they fared better it was better, otherwise what is the meaning of “faring better” is?
“A story written by a soldier at a roadblock abusing a Palestinian, who could be his father, brought tears to my eyes.”
Those stories always upset me – which is why I ensure when I’m at those road blocks, they do not happen. And that Palestinians are treated with respect, even though this puts me in a far more risky situation. I do not believe the above story is the ‘way’ of most of our soldiers.
“You say Israel reformed its education system, how so”
I’ll have to look for links, well ones that you won’t rule out as pure propaganda or ‘brainwashing’, but a few sources I’ve read says it had to change because of what Oslo was trying to achieve.
“I was pointing out that if your justification for the impossibly of coexistence of Jews and Arabs in a single state is the history of Jews living in Arab (or Muslim) countries, then it is a pretty lame one, since it was actually much better than in Europe, and few people would say that Jews and Europeans cannot live in a single state.”
Jews can obviously live in European states – but history has proven it will come with a lot of bumps (but I guess this is our fate in most countries). There’s a reason Jews are still there however. How many Jews live in the Arab world? Heck, did you read what happened in Yemen two months ago? A Rabbi’s brother as walking down the street – ‘Convert to Islam,’ said a man. The man refused and in the process took his last breath. There is a difference, in my opinion, between European difficulties with Jews and the Arabs’. Most books will tell you that.
““Because Jews fared better in the Arab world than Europe, it was better?” Of course if they fared better it was better, otherwise what is the meaning of “faring better” is?”
I was talking about the overall situation, and poorly phrased my sentence – apologies. I was trying to say that despite the many success stories of Arab Jews (financially, politically etc), the majority of them struggled with being 2nd class citizens and fear. The fact a few ‘fared better’ doesn’t mean the Arab Jews ‘fared better’ as a whole than European Jewry (Again, I am not comparing the Moors, who were relatively good, or the Ottomans who never really had an issue with the Jews)
Avram
Yeah, but don’t you ask yourself what you are doing there at the roadblock in the first place, cordoning people, pointing guns, humiliating them, no matter how nice you are about it? And for every X good Avrams like you, there are Y bad ones, and IDF doesn’t do anything to investigate, punish (unless the case gets too much exposure, and even then…) Gideon Levy has scores of stories about people dying waiting for an ambulance, about mothers who have to give birth to still born babies; all for what? for some freaks in Tapuakh and Shiloh to have their way?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcGm-gxmxHw
Now, back to the Jews in Arab countries. You see, you cannot separate it from them being associated – rightly or wrongly – with the State of Israel and its actions. This is just a historical fact: these problems if not started then at least escalated with Zionism and even then, not everywhere – Morocco, for example, Jews left on their own, and not all to Israel either. Jews can live in Europe because they are not associated with a state that has been oppressing and dispossessing several million Europeans for the last 60 years.
I’m sorry to say Peter, in my gdud in Miluim – I see perhaps 3-5 of those MAX. most of us treat the Arabs, within reason, with as much respect as possible. I say within reason, before you jump on me, because sometimes you are in a situation which can endanger you and you do things (like pointing your gun, which I hate but it’s a necessity at times). You’re very angry with Israel – and on many points, you have every right to be.
You obviously missed the Pogroms in Fez well before Zionism that killed 100,000+ Jews. If you want, I can go look up all the stuff and show you how bad it was for Moroccan Jewry, and then other countries if you like before Zionism’s rise. We were 2nd class citizens with many many difficulties. Did Zionism make it worse? Yup, so there you’re 100% right. The evidence of that is with the last ‘real’ generation of Arab Jews who live here and talk rather openly about the hell they lived in (I just wish we’d have given them a better ‘heaven’).
Btw, you mentioned earlier in this thread about ‘our exile’ – but you never said from where.
Lastly, I have no problems with you taking up space with personal experiences. As long as Alex doesn’t mind, and I don’t think he does, please continue – I always find it interesting.
Actually, just got this by e-mail:
THE JEWS OF MOROCCO
1875: Debdou – 20 Jews killed.
1903: Taza – 40 Jews killed by Muslims during anti-Jewish riots.
1903 – Azemmour – Many Jews killed in Muslim attacks.
1907: Mazagan – 30 Jews killed; 200 women, girls and boys abducted, raped, and then ransomed.
1907: Azemmour – Many Jews killed in Muslim attacks.
April 28, 1912: Fez – At start of French rule, Muslims riot, killing 60 Jews and sacking the Jewish quarter of the city.
http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2009/02/all-you-wanted-to-know-about-muslim.html
You’re surely not going to blame this on Zionism are you? And we haven’t even gone back ‘historically’ into various other ‘issues’ with the Arab & Jew in Morocco.
Avram, you have a knack for saying something that never conflicted with what I said but presenting it as some sort of rebuttal. So, I said, “And for every X good Avrams like you, there are Y bad ones, and IDF doesn’t do anything to investigate, punish”. I did not specify X and Y, because I simply cannot. What I did imply is that Y is big enough for it to be an institutional, systemic problem, which is not treated by the State of Israel at all. Your gdud miluim, just as mine in the past, might be a good case, but there are some that are not so good. I guess that sadirnikim might be worse than miluimnikim, because they are just kids who don’t know better. Some brigades are better than others and most anything, I guess, is better than Magav. And, to repeat, even if you show as much respect as possible, you have to examine the fact itself that you are there and put yourself in the skin of a Palestinian and how he feels about a man with a gun controlling his life, preventing him/her from freely moving in his homeland etc, not to mention the more egregious cases.
I’ll read about it (send it over!), though I don’t think it contradicts anything we said. The number 100,000+ seems unreasonably high, just as the number of Jews massacred by Bogdan Khmelnitzkiy in Ukraine (that’s Europe!) was nowhere near the alleged 500,000 – these things tend to be exaggerated in histories.
Still, my point was never that live was all honey for Jews in the Arab countries, but that on the whole they fared better there than in Europe. And even this was never a too important point, so, let’s just drop it, I can see no reason to waste breath on this.
Come on, that was just a figure of speech. I meant that most Jews these days live not in Israel. This is what sometimes is referred to as “exile”, a literal translation of Hebrew “golah”. (Do you know, by the way, that alongside all those Jews who have little or no intention of coming to Israel, there are tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of Israelis that decided to emigrate?) I was claiming that “on average” Jews are less attached to the land than Arabs. They are a more cosmopolitan people due to many different factors that shaped their history and psyche. That was to illustrate the point that while a Jewish person might it find unreasonable for the exiled Palestinians to hold to the hopes of someday returning to their villages in Palestine, while living in abject poverty in refugee camps in Lebanon or elsewhere, for the Arabs themselves this does not seem unreasonable at all – this is in their national character. I am talking in primitive terms, and qualify everything to make sure that I refer to general characteristics, not concrete cases.
“Do you know, by the way, that alongside all those Jews who have little or no intention of coming to Israel, there are tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of Israelis that decided to emigrate?”
Of course – Israelis are notorious for leaving (& a lot return obviously too). Israel isn’t for everyone, so obviously, many Jews won’t (or are turned off by A B C) make the decision to live here.
We could say the same thing about the Palestinian upper class (or those who can afford it) – they leave the region (or have left it) with or without any intention of coming back.
“I was claiming that “on average” Jews are less attached to the land than Arabs.”
I guess there’s no way to really prove this one way or another – so to debate it is rather pointless I’d guess.
“this is in their national character”
Just as it seems it was ours to return here too …
“I’ll read about it (send it over!)”
I’ll get the book title when I go home sir.