March 20, 2004
GET ON WITH YOUR LIVES ALREADY:
By any means necessary: It is not simply Israel's current hardline government that is to blame for the subjugation of Palestinians, but Zionism itself (Ghada Karmi, March 18, 2004, The Guardian)
For those who have forgotten or never understood what Zionism meant in practice, the Israeli historian, Benny Morris's latest revelations and comments - published first in the Israeli daily Haaretz and then in the Guardian - make salutary reading. They have raised a storm of controversy that is still raging two months later, perhaps because they were too honest about an ideology that some would rather keep hidden. Morris, who first exposed the dark circumstances of Israel's creation in his groundbreaking 1988 book on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, explains the Israeli project with a brutal candour few Zionists have been prepared to display. [...]"The right of [Palestinian] refugees to return ... seems natural and just," Morris says. "But this 'right of return' needs to be weighed against the right to life and wellbeing of the 5 million Jews who currently live in Israel." Apparently, Jewish self-determination is an imperative that supersedes the rights of the people at whose expense it was promulgated.
And in this he encapsulates the essence of Zionism. Though creating Israel entailed Palestinian suffering, Morris argues, it was for a noble aim. That is why Zionism is still a dangerous idea: at its root is a conviction of moral rightness that justifies almost any act deemed necessary to preserve the Jewish state. If that means massive military - including nuclear - force, unsavoury alliances, theft of others' resources, aggression and occupation, the brutal crushing of all resistance - then so be it. No one should be under any illusion that Zionism is a spent force, regardless of current discourse about "post-Zionism". That a benign Zionism, sympathetic to Palestinians, also exists means little while these basic tenets remain.
We must thank Morris for disabusing us of such notions. But a project that is morally one-sided and can only survive through force and xenophobia has no long-term future. As he himself says: "Destruction could be the end of this process."
How does Ms Karmi think the world works? The Indians have an equally just case for reclaiming America--think we're going to let them? Okay, what wouldn't we be prepared to do to them if they used Palestinian methods to try? Posted by Orrin Judd at March 20, 2004 2:01 PM
How about the Huguenots of France? The Catholics of England?
Posted by: Paul Cella at March 20, 2004 2:24 PMThe Romans of Palestine?
Posted by: oj at March 20, 2004 2:26 PMI'm thinking of rediscovering my Saxon roots.
Posted by: David Cohen at March 20, 2004 3:09 PM"Palestine" used to be Christian. Should we reclaim it? And by what methods???
Posted by: Sandy P. at March 20, 2004 5:00 PMThere is no such thing as a Palestinian. They cannot even say the word.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at March 20, 2004 5:34 PMPayback's a . . ., specially when their guy, the
Great Mufti, helped the ex-paper hanger murder Jews from Hungary; collaborating with Veesenamayer & Eichmann,) and the Balkans (with the Handscar SS Battalion, to Iraq; (in the aftermath of the Rashid Ali coup)
Just so. The best of the many good reasons America must continue to support Israel is that they, like us, are a settler nation. We have a common heritage with all peoples of the wagon train, with those who have trekked forth.
I shall be ready to hold that the Israelis must be dispossesed right after I sign my house over to the Lenni Lenape.
Orrin, your question is purely rhetorical : the US already showed the Indians what they do with people who behave like Palestinians (i.e. attacking settlers in barbarious ways).
Posted by: Peter at March 21, 2004 9:13 AMThe only just remedy to such historical disputes over territory is to establish secular, non-ethnic democratic governments which enfranchise all religious and ethnic groups. America is the only successful example of such a state. Whether the native Americans of today admit to it or not, they own America as much as any other American today.
Short of this, territorial ownership can only be settled by tribal warfare, as it has been throughout history. Under that paradigm, Zionism is just the expression of ethnic/religious tribal justification that every other national group must establish just to survive.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at March 21, 2004 12:35 PMRobert:
Not only that, but the American Indians of today lead a far more comfortable existence than the stone-age lifestyle they would have been stuck with, otherwise.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at March 21, 2004 2:30 PMOJ, their values may not permeate our society, but neither are their values or their cultural influences absent. They are free to practice their religion and traditions, and to participate as individuals in the political process on an equal footing with any other group of individuals. It's a lot better than living in a state of perpetual warfare with a ntation that they could never defeat, as the Palestinians are.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at March 21, 2004 6:19 PMRecently, Pres Bush said that societies allowing individual freedom are technologically and culturally leagues ahead of those that don't.
No matter their religious background. Sounds perilously close to Darwinism, to me.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at March 21, 2004 6:58 PMYes, but freedom is a religious concept and an anti-Darwinian one.
Posted by: oj at March 21, 2004 7:01 PMWhy would the 'right of return' be "natural and just" ?
There's a very good reason that those people are refugees, and it has to do with their societal inability to live as a civilized people.
Also, they lost a war of aggression that they participated in...
When Ms Karmi mentions "unsavoury alliences", it's the US she's talking about, no ?
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 22, 2004 1:03 AMOJ:
Freedom is a material concept with material consequences. As the President noted.
As for being anti-Darwinian, the material consequences of freedom convey amazing increments in fitness compared to the alternatives.
As the President noted.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at March 22, 2004 8:36 PMJeff:
No it isn't material. Whether you are free or slave makes no difference to the material of which you are constructed.
Material well-being comes from proper spiritual values.
Posted by: oj at March 22, 2004 8:57 PMMaybe you should have read the President's speech a little more closely.
He said free societies will leave unfree societies in the dust--he spoke of a material phenomena with material consequences.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at March 23, 2004 5:52 PMFreedom is not material, though its consequences are in part material.
Posted by: oj at March 23, 2004 6:06 PMWell, the lack of freedom is very material--how else to lose it except through material means?
So freedom must also be material. After all, one can use material terms to describe it.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at March 24, 2004 6:37 PMProve it.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at March 24, 2004 10:25 PMTut-tut--you made the claim.
Posted by: oj at March 24, 2004 10:31 PM