"Isaac Blessing Jacob" by Govert Teunisz Flinck 1639, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
"The Israel Lobby" is the academic equivalent of waving a big red cape at one's ideological opponents, hoping they'll foam at the mouth and act stark raving mad because the authors cited Chomsky or CommonDreams, or because, "the Fatah office in Washington distributed the article to an extensive mailing list."
For those of you who know, that I am a devout Christian, and a staunch supporter of Israel, it will not surprise you that this was exactly my reaction when I glanced over the 83 page essay released last week by Professor John J. Mearsheimer and Dean Stephen Walt, entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy". When I read that David Duke had jumped on the bandwagon, my fingers were itching to express my dismay.
Especially when reading this paragraph in the essay:
As for so‐called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire threat to vital U.S. interests, apart from the U.S. commitment to Israel itself. Although the United States does have a number of disagreements with these regimes, Washington would not be nearly as worried about Iran, Ba’thist Iraq, or Syria were it not so closely tied to Israel. Even if these states acquire nuclear weapons—which is obviously not desirable—it would not be a strategic disaster for the United States.
What Professor Mearsheimer and Dean Walt are really saying is that America should drop their support for Israel and all problems would go away. This is in a nutshell the message of the whole report.
But I resisted and decided to sleep over it. It helped. My view has changed, and I welcome this essay for it is pure bate in a sense which I will make clear further below. I am still not finished reading it, which I suspect is the main reason why so few have commented in depth.
To be sure, the contents of this essay are manna from heaven for all anti-Semites and enemies of the State of Israel. It provides well laid-out arguments and enough seemingly neutral 'facts' to mask once true and utterly irrational convictions as reasonable and scholarly. The left will be defending it on that basis alone, and ridicule any notion of it providing fuel for the anti-Semites' and Islamists' peddling agenda.
Here is where the bate begins to take effect: We will be told, that it must not be dismissed as anti-Semitic or condemned for this reason or for the bias it clearly portrays. The authors should not be attacked, as they no doubt will be, on a personal basis, because if ever there was a good example of a thoroughly compiled opinion, this certainly is one.
The bate gathers momentum: Instead we must dig deeper and take the work, Mearsheimer and Walt begun, to the next level. We must ask and debate as to whether abandoning US support for Israel has become geopolitically preferable. Whether the US could sacrifice Israel in the interest of bringing about stability and peace in the Middle East. Will it reduce oil prices and ensure economic stability for the global economy. We must dispassionately consider U.S. interests in the light of the negative influence brought about by our close association with Israel and the Jewish people in this country.
Now the bate has reached full speed: We must consider, how this influence came about and whether it warrants intervention; whether we need to curb this influence. We must also resume the debate why it is that Jews are so successful, as Mearsheimer and Walt clearly point out.
When Professor Mearsheimer and Dean Walt assure us that "...there is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway U.S. policy towards Israel", all we hear is a great big but, especially in view of this:
The United States has a divided government that offers many ways to influence the policy process. As a result, interest groups can shape policy in many different ways—by lobbying elected representatives and members of the executive branch, making campaign contributions, voting in elections, molding public opinion, etc.
Furthermore, special interest groups enjoy disproportionate power when they are committed to a particular issue and the bulk of the population is indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate those who care about the issue in question, even if their numbers are small, confident that the rest of the population will not penalize them.
The Israel Lobby’s power flows from its unmatched ability to play this game of interest group politics. In its basic operations, it is no different from interest groups like the Farm Lobby, steel and textile workers, and other ethnic lobbies. What sets the Israel Lobby apart is its extraordinary effectiveness.
The bate will find its glorious crescendo in the question of all questions: But most important of all, we must ask why do the Jews go to such extraordinary length, we must ask, what is their real objective?
Does any of this sound familiar to you? Do any of you feel, that the perceived need to lobby, may have anything to do with the extremely remote likelihood, that, if and when these questions are being debated widely and publicly, the sentiment will remain objective, neutral and free of rampant anti-Semitic outbursts?
I welcome this essay because it will lure out the anti-Semites amongst us, who have been waiting for such an excuse to dress their irrational hatred in reasonableness and fake moderation. It is our task to differentiate between those who welcome this opinion to debate the issues and those who pursue their morbid hidden agenda.
More reax. from both sides of the Blogosphere:
Scott Johnson @ Powerline, pulverizes the distinguished pair:
[...] Mearsheimer and Walt argue that there is neither a moral nor a strategic case to be made for supporting Israel, so the only explanation for American policy must be the "Israel lobby." The alternative, of course, is that they are wrong, and that there are good reasons why Israel has enjoyed the support (consistently, albeit to varying degrees) of eleven consecutive administrations of both parties, and a large majority of the American people for over half a century. Which is more likely: that all of these people have been bamboozled by a sinister "Lobby," or that there are, in fact, good but unacknowledged (by Mearsheimer and Walt) reasons for our historic support of Israel?
Perhaps the most damaging implication of Mearsheimer and Walt's essay is that America's alliance with Israel brought about 9/11. They assert that to say Israel and the United States face a common terrorist threat "has the causal relationship backwards: rather, the United States has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around." [...]
Mearsheimer and Walt throw distortion and defamation like rice at a wedding. Perhaps the most absurd element of the essay is the fancy that the "Lobby" seeks to stifle debate on campus and conducts a campaign to eliminate criticism of Israel from college campuses. Like Paul Findley, Mearsheimer and Walt fancy themselves the brave dissenters from a sinister pro-Israel orthodoxy. "Anyone who criticizes Israeli actions or says that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over U.S. Middle East policy...stands a good chance of getting labeled an anti-Semite." These tenured faculty members of distinguished academic institutions dare to take the chance. For its sheer crudity, however, their essay subjects them to the even greater chance of getting labeled charlatans.
Yesterday I wrote here about the outrageous essay/research paper published by Professor John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt on "the Israel lobby." I find the paper notable because of its provenance and shocking because of its scholarly pretense combined with its dishonesty. Virtually every paragraph in its 40 pages of text plays fast and loose with facts, treats evidence with unscholarly partiality, engages in axe grinding, or casts defamatory charges of a particularly unsavory kind. It has been celebrated by David Duke, the PLO, and a member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (the Islamist organization that founded Hamas).
Hugh Hewitt delivers the final blows:
Harvard's Kennedy School has got a Dean who can only be described as a nutter, a conspiracy theorist of the first order, indulging in the worst sort of anti-Semitic slanders --American Jews are foreign agents!-- and giving open encouragement to and endorsement of the extremist views of American foreign policy circulating in the camps of America's enemies.
Today the Los Angeles Times runs a front page story on ties between Iran and al Qaeda. Professor Mearsheimer and Dean Walt will no doubt see the hand of the Israel Lobby at work in the story, and in the larger effort to contain the Iranian regime which believes that Israel ought not to exist and that the Holocaust didn't happen.
Glenn Reynolds @ Instapundit hits the nail on the head: "YALE HAS ITS TALIBAN, HARVARD HAS DAVID DUKE:
"A paper recently co-authored by the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government about the allegedly far-reaching influence of an 'Israel lobby' is winning praise from white supremacist David Duke. The Palestine Liberation Organization mission to Washington is distributing the paper, which also is being hailed by a senior member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization."
No doubt the President's speech yesterday would have upset the old apple cart"
"I made it clear, and I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel," said Bush, who was apparently referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for the destruction of Israel.
Scott @ Lawyers Guns And Money, makes this a dig at the right wing bloggers...eh? I thought I landed on Glenn Greenwald's site for a moment. There must be a reason the PLO mission to Washington and the Muslim Brotherhood are distributing the paper, whether the scholars intended to or not, they have provided them with well laid-out arguments perfectly suited to disguise rabid anti-Semitism.
I don't think there's any reason to believe that anti-Semitism played a role in writing it even if anti-Semites trumpet it, but I'm sure some clueless hacks will run with the New York Sun's angle and play the guilt-by-association game--turning this work of two scholars into something about "Harvard" (and even more amusingly into something about "liberal academics.")
In his post today Daniel Drezner emphasizes:
Walt and Mearsheimer should not be criticized as anti-Semites, because that's patently false. They should be criticized for doing piss-poor, monocausal social science.*
[...] the main empirical problems with the article are that :
A) They fail to demonstrate that Israel is a net strategic liability;
B) They ascribe U.S. foreign policy behavior almost exclusively to the activities of the "Israel Lobby"; and
C) They omit consderation of contradictory policies and countervailing foreign policy lobbies.
Mark Noonan @ B4B:
The thing is, if you believe in God, then you know God controls the destines of the world and that all will come out the way He desires. If, on the other hand, you don't believe in God then you must, if you have any sense at all, realize that in a population six billion strong, there is no way a person or cabal are going to control things. Paranoia just leads to more paranoia. I'm a Catholic who supports a Protestant President and I write for a blog operated by a Jew...so, which part of the conspiracy controls me? Am I taking my orders from the Pope, the Elders or Jerry Falwell? Or is it all three? Maybe they are all in it together!
So, congratulations, leftwing, you've moved so far into the fever swamps that the KKKers are pleased.
The New York Sun updates today:
Also critical of the paper's academic quality was one of the figures mentioned in it as part of the "lobby," President Clinton's special Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross, who said the authors displayed "a woeful lack of knowledge on the subject."
"The part I've read I find remarkable for its lack of seriousness," Mr. Ross told the Sun yesterday. "It is basically a series of assertions. They quote only those people who basically have this point of view and don't take a serious look at anything in a more profound way. It is masquerading as scholarship.
"I would say this is an effort to take a point of view and give it academic legitimacy," he continued.[...]
Last night Dean Walt responded to the furor his paper has caused:
"I have discussed your inquiry with my co-author, Professor Mearsheimer," he told the Sun." We appreciate the invitation to respond to the comments, but prefer not to."
UPDATE I: Siggy extracts the necessaries, and dissects to the point:
In other words, Osama bin Laden and the like are only distractions. Despite Arab world denials, the irrational and frenzied anti Semitism is an appropriate response to Israel.
Might we surmise that the Harvard Arab Alumni Association played a part here?.
and David Bernstein @ The Volokh Conspiracy is clearly not impressed:
One expects a lot better from Harvard and Chicago professors than this.
UPDATE II: And Rob Farley one of my favorite liberal bloggers, who bloggs for Lawyers Guns And Money spanks my wrist....ouch:
I wish that Reynolds, Hewitt, the boys at Powerline, the lovely Alexandra, or really anyone on the right side of the blogosphere would at least take a moment to note that Mearsheimer and Walt are not raving leftists, but rather, respectively, a genuine conservative and a political moderate. Mearsheimer is a Republican, views the first George Bush as a great foreign policy President, graduated from West Point, served in the US Air Force, and hates the United Nations. In short, he's exactly the kind of guy that David Horowitz would like to see more of in the academy. He cannot be relied upon to parrot the Republican Party line at any given time, and that's partially why he's working at the University of Chicago, rather than the Heritage Foundation.
Reynolds, Hewitt, et al carefully avoid discussing any of this, because they'd prefer their readers to think that all academics are crazy, America loathing, anti-semitic leftists with Ward Churchill tatoos.
OK that's it Rob, 10 comments in my comments section as punishment for misrepresentation. LOL!!
Criticism of brutal racist israeli policies is not antisemetism.
It is criticism of brutal racist policies. No more, no less.
It is time that people stopped waving the Antisemitic paintbrush about because we are all waking up to that tactic..
Posted by: Therzal | Sunday, May 28, 2006 at 09:59 AM
David Byron
"Although Palestinians in Israel have the right to vote, Israeli law does not allow an Arab political party to run in the Knesset election if its platform demands full and equal rights for Palestinian citizens."
This statement as quoted by you is simply a lie. Israel law allows any party, be it Arab, Jewish, religious, communist, socialist or other to run for the Knesset. In fact, tomorrow, 4 independant Arab parties will compete in the Israeli elections. United Arab List(Raam), Balad, Hadash,and ODA (Da'am in Arabic), Some of them, like Balad (National Democratic Assembly) seeks (their own words) "to transform Israel from" a "state of the Jews" to a "democratic state with equality for all of its citizens". Their foreign policy - supports the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, supports the return of all Palestinian refugees to Israel and their domestic policy - demands that the Israeli government recognize the rights of the Arab minority in Israel to cultural and educational autonomy. You can read the party platform on your own since I don't know how to paste the address on this post.
Please David, before you make this kind of statement, check the facts. Please, consult more than just Arab propaganda rags.
Posted by: Richard | Monday, March 27, 2006 at 01:16 PM
David,
Wow, I step away for the weekend, and I come back to an absolute Niagara Falls of rancor and absurdity, and a quite depressingly high noise-to-signal ratio. Such sound! Such fury!
I can’t possibly respond to all of that instantly and still have a life. I’ll pick the most important points and respond as I have time later.
Oh, and good Lord, there's a whole other post on it with eighty comments already...
See, Alexandra, this is why I tend not to comment much these days: a big conversation gets rolling and lots of points need to be addressed but then the eight kids take up a couple of days and when I come back, it's too late...
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Monday, March 27, 2006 at 11:33 AM
WHAT GENOCIDE?
Posted by: Michael (van der) Galien | Monday, March 27, 2006 at 08:35 AM
Um, it is? Different how?
I'm saying that the root of the Palestinian crisis is the crime of ethnic cleansing and the land grab (ie genocide by the definition of the convention) commited by Israel. That the land they stole still belongs to the Palestinian people - by right of sovereignty.
Israel is not unique in commiting ethnic cleansing or grabing other people's land but it is probably the best known historically current example.
Posted by: DavidByron | Sunday, March 26, 2006 at 08:28 PM
David,
I am confused now. Isn't your point that Israel is in some way different from most other nations?
Posted by: North by Northwest | Sunday, March 26, 2006 at 06:17 PM
Alexandra, just because you write a lot doesn't mean I have to agree that what you wrote is relevent.
The great majority of what people have said about this issue seems irrelevent to me and for reasons I have stated (it's mostly just mud-slinging). Even this issue of whether Israel is a democracy or an apartheid state is irrelevent to the question of the morality of Israel's ethnic cleansing and land grab.
Most of the evidence you've put forward is evidence to suggest something that nobody has actually denied; namely that the Palestinians didn't have an independent nation state at the time of the land grab. I'm not arguing with you about that. I am saying that fact which I agree with isn't relevent because the right of sovereignty rests with the people, not with the nation state. Kicking people off their land and commiting ethnic cleansing is wrong whether you do it to a whole nation state or a part of a state or a people under the odd circumstances that Palestine was under at the time.
Now this thing about Israel being a democracy or an apartheid state is a side issue but as far as I can see you just admited Israel was an apartheid state in replying to that quote (which I had already put into a comment further up incidentally - but reworded). If you accept that statement -- which you appeared to do --- then you have accepted that Israel by law treats people differently according to race and prevents Palestinian representation. That is an apartheid state. The rest of what you said is therefore not relevent to that question.
And finally, you really are an intellectual lightweight to dismiss all I have written in my long comment as irrelevant.
I stated my reasons. You did not challenge those reasons.
Posted by: DavidByron | Sunday, March 26, 2006 at 05:59 PM
Byron,
First of all it would be helpful if you would adopt everyone else's good manners and address the person you are talking to. You have confused every single thread by rambling on with everyone having to guess who you are talking to and having to find which quote relates to which commenter. Whilst even you don't seem to know what you have said, there are 15-20 000 readers a day on ATB who do not comment, therefore they have to rummage around your thread and make sense of it, which is difficult enough as it is.
You say:
You did not say that, I found it in the long essay, for which you simply provided the link. Are you now confusing yourself with your "great authority on the subject", the Palestinian human rights activist and an affiliate to the Palestine Right to Return Coalition?
Your selective misrepresentation of what both you and I have said re-appartheid does not even warrant a comment. This is what I actually said:
And finally, you really are an intellectual lightweight to dismiss all I have written in my long comment as irrelevant.
Posted by: Alexandra | Sunday, March 26, 2006 at 04:52 PM
Arab Members of the Knesset regularly advocate the dissolution of the State of Israel. Such treason would not be permitted in most Western democracies, let alone in any Middle Eastern tyranny. So in fact, Israel is more democratic than most Western democracies.
But since when should the existence of a State depend only upon whether some outsider finds it to his taste? The fact that a commenter suggests that the remedy for this or that supposed shortcoming of the State of Israel is reason enough for its destruction is proof of the commenter's underlying bad faith and anti-Semitism.
Posted by: Gandalin | Sunday, March 26, 2006 at 03:45 PM
Eric Hoffer eloquently characterized Israel's situation in an essay he published in 1968 in the Los Angeles Times.
“Israel’s Peculiar Position”
Eric Hoffer
The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchmen, Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis.
Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.
Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover. But should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.
No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him.
The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.
The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources.
Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.
I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
“Israel’s Peculiar Position”
Los Angeles Times, Sunday May 26, 1968, Section G-7.
Posted by: Gandalin | Sunday, March 26, 2006 at 03:21 PM
We're talking about whether Israel is a democracy or an apartheid state.
I said:
Although Palestinians in Israel have the right to vote, Israeli law does not allow an Arab political party to run in the Knesset election if its platform demands full and equal rights for Palestinian citizens.
Alexandra didn't deny this fact, and in fact endorsed it:
Hahaha, how unreasonable, why Hamas running in the Knesset elections would be how democracy should run, right David?
So you admit Israel is an apartheid state. Why did you bother with all that other stuff then? I remind you that the State of Israel's status after their attack on Palestine is irrelevent to the crime.
I've already dealt with the argument that people only have rights if they constitute an independent nation state (an argument you'd reject if applied to the Jews of course, who had no state). People have sovereign rights over the land they occupy regardless of whether they are an independent sovereign state. Your comments about Palestine just aren't relevent.
Posted by: DavidByron | Sunday, March 26, 2006 at 02:45 PM
"As long as most media will lie, peace won't be possible in the Middle East." Pierre Rehov
Thank you for not being a liar, and thank you for definitely NOT being "most media", Alexandra the Beautiful. : )
ATB Rocks !!
secularislam.org
mesora.org/france/
tellthechildrenthetruth.com
Golda Meir also has a very famous quote when she truthfully stated that if the Arab-muslims loved their own children more strongly than they hate the Jews, then there wouldn't be an arab-Israeli conflict in this world. Sad and tragic, but very true indeed.
Posted by: RL | Saturday, March 25, 2006 at 07:12 PM
Davie Davie,
You come out with such absolute gems of canard, I have to laugh.
Now let's see, follow me if you can please, this is going to be a long one, in fact I might even make it into a post. Kenny and I have a kind of ongoing bet who can post the longest comment. I don't have to tell you that he is the reigning champion.
Apartheid was a legal system; BY LAW blacks had no right to vote; no ability to hold public office, attend a "white" university, etc. Your argument is demolished by picking up any Israeli law book. Arabs are free to vote, run as candidates and sit in the Knesset on the lists of the big political parties, attend any university (there is even an affirmative action system a la the US), etc. This is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of jurisprudence. So, either you are incredibly ill-informed when you make this accusation, or you are simply maliciously slandering.
I have to admit I fear the former to be correct as the link you provide as the authority on the subject, is an article written by a Dutch-Palestinian political scientist, human rights activist and an affiliate to the the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (Al-Awda) and ElectronicIntifada.net.whose article is less than convincing.
This was my favorite sentence:
Hahaha, how unreasonable, why Hamas running in the Knesset elections would be how democracy should run, right David?
What I find most revealing is that the actual, real, legal apartheid of, for instance, Saudi Arabia (non-Muslims not allowed to be citizens) does not seem to perturb you or any other Israel-bashers in the least.
In one of your earlier comments (from memory) you refer to the population of the Sancak of Jerusalem, Wilayet of Beirut, etc. which later constituted the western 1/5 of the British Palestine Mandate (the Brits chose the name; too bad they didn't call it the Mandate of Judea) as "Muslim and Christian." I have news for you: Jews always lived here. In fact, at various points in history, even after Jewish sovereignty was destroyed, there was a Jewish majority in various parts of the country over the centuries (e.g. a Jewish majority in the Galilee at least until the Byzantine Christian persecution of the Jews in the 5th century), and a Jewish majority in Jerusalem already in the 19th century. Obviously, you have never opened a document from an Ottoman court, despite your assertions about the Ottoman empire. Again, your conspicuous omission is rather revealing.
Moving swiftly on, as I think a lot of the other points have been dealt with, you dismiss in the most cavalier fashion the centrality of historical and religious reality. Let me use an anaology: Let us assume that during the last world war a Jewish family owned a house. Let us assume further that most of the family was deported, but the Germans who moved into the house kept on one of the children of the family as a maidservant. Maybe the house even passed hands a few times, from Germans to Poles. But when you live in someone else's house- and particularly when the members of that family continue to faithfully pray toward that house 3 times a day, every day, for 2,000 years- and members of that family keep coming to live and work in that house, you cannot claim to be surprised when the family finally returns to claim the house. Englishmen may come and go; Romans may come and go; Picts and wends may come and go- these are all upstarts, newcomers, and fly-by-nights in the historical experience of the Jewish people. The Jews are the oldest nationality extant, and, much to your chagrin and your fellow Israel bashers, so long as they exist they will indeed keep returning to rebuild Jerusalem.
And while we are speaking of history, this brings us to my last point which I will try to explain AGAIN using perhaps different words in an attempt to be understood, although after this I shall gracefully give up and declare you simply uninformed on this subject:
There were no states or nationalities in the Middle East, certainly not among Sunni Muslims, until the Brits and French redrew the map after WWI. There never was, historically, any "Palestinian" Arab identity- and this area never had political sovereignty. After the Roman Empire, it was part of the Byzantine Empire. After the Islamic Conquest, it was part of, first, the Umayyad Empire; then the 'Abbasid Empire; then the Tulunid Empire; then it went briefly to the Byzantines, then the Saljuqs, then the Crusaders (the only time it was an independent political entity, by the way, between the end of Jewish sovereignty in the ancient world and the renewal of Jewish sovereignty in the modern one- the Kingdom of Jerusalem, not "Palestine"); Ayyubid Empire; Mamluke Empire; and, finally, the Ottoman Empire. At no time was there a country called "Palestine." Occasionally the geographic region the Romans had designated as "Palestine" was used as a geographic term in the medieval Arabic geographies, but it had no political meaning whatsoever. As has already been noted, under the Ottomans the area was divided among 3 different administrations- the Province of Beirut; the Province of Damascus; and the Sancak of Jerusalem (comprising roughly today's southern coastal plain and the hills of Judea).
If you ever refer to the Palestine Mandate, which was created by the League of Nations at the San Remo conference solely for the purpose of establishing the Jewish National Home and awarded to Britain under those terms (which she violated): that included all of the area which Britain then quite illegally separated into the Mintaqa (region) of Eastern Palestine or Transjordania- today's Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (which also, incidentally, does not allow Jews to be or become citizens- although, unlike the Saudis, the Jordanians permit Christians).
Could someone please explain convincingly why, in addition to already getting 4/5 of the only "Palestine" which has ever existed since Roman times, the very same Arabs- ethnicially, religiously, culturally, and even tribally and familially- should get yet another country in this tiny area?
You and the whole 'Palestine' crowd were singularly unperturbed when the areas allocated by the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947 to an Arab state were swallowed up by Egypt and Jordan. One heard literally not a peep out of you. It seems that the only thing to which you object to is the exact same thing for which this whole extremely modern identity of "Palestinian" was invented: as a negation of Israel and the Jews. This is why the Arabs of the area have always rejected a state at every opportunity- most recently at Camp David in 1999; their goal is not to establish a state for themselves, but rather to destroy Israel.
In that one thing, at least, you are being honest: you don't hide the fact that your hatred has nothing whatsoever to do with what Israel does or does not do, but merely the fact that it is. For, even if Israel did 1/10 of what you and the Palestinian Authority accuse it of doing (and your imaginations are quite fecund, and not restrained by any over-scrupulous respect for truth- witness the Jenin "massacre"), it is still, morally, light-years ahead not only of any country in the Middle East,Africa, or Asia, but also of countries such as France when they have been confronted with wars which were not existential.
Yet you and the other anti-Semites of this world have never been perturbed by real massacres and genocides, true viciousness and injustice. No, the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can freely vote and speak out against their own government- where even terrorists don't get the death penalty- that's the place that you and your ilk can't abide.
As Golda Meir once said, "Israel is the Jew among nations."
Posted by: Alexandra | Saturday, March 25, 2006 at 05:10 PM
DBAS:
Oddball views? You are the one that has not culitvated a position other than that of an anti-Semite.
Posted by: Washington | Saturday, March 25, 2006 at 02:30 PM
you can't expect people to interpret your statements generously when you in your turn put the most malicious possible interpretation on what the other people say back to you
I'm not. I'm saying your statements have no other interpretation I can see. I questioned them, you explained them, I did understand them and I have the same opinion of them.
when people here say something like, "Their lives are full of hate" (a generalization that is valid of the Palestinians if ever it was valid of any culture), they also mean something like, "The society of the Palestinians is dominated by those who are full of hate, to such a degree that Palestinians who are motivated by love and forgiveness are unable significantly to influence the corporate behavior of their people"
I understand you and I am saying that bolded statement is racist.
If it is not racist for you to say, "The Israelis have done such-and-such a bad thing," then it is not necessarily racist for others to say, "The Palestinians have done such-and-such a bad thing."
But you didn't make a statement comparable to mine.
I am recommending to you that you interpret with charity and generosity the opinions and statements of those who disagree with you
And then what? When it turns out that you meant exactly what I first thought you meant, even following considerable clarification?
------------------------------------
it's almost as though you think that the Palestinian community (in some ill-defined sense) should have been able to veto the desires of the individual Palestinians who sold too much land to the Jews. I doubt very much that that's what you really mean
Yes that's what I mean (although as usual your facts are all wrong; Jews didn't all buy the land and didn't buy them off Palestinians but absentee landlords in Istanbull for the most part, the issue isn't civil ownership but immigration) if by that all you mean is that the rights of the community can override the rights of the individual. Duh.
You talk of the "Palestinians' sovereignty" and the "Palestinians' rights," but you do so in ways that do not make sense if translated directly into individual terms -- yet you seem to consider that these "rights," whatever they are, have the same inalienable character as do the core individual rights referred to by the Declaration of Independence
The Declaration also talks about community rights. Most people don't have a problem with this; it's really your own issue here. I'm happy to help you figure it out but ultimately I simply don't agree that all rights are fundamentally of necessity individual rights. It's possible the circle can't be squared although I think it can.
you've made up your own rules
You're the one with the oddball views here. Your views would question almost all governmental functions. It's an anarchist view.
You seem to think that a person can claim rights for himself even while having no intention whatsoever of respecting them in others. At least, that's what you seem to say when you reject my principle that the claim to one's own rights is contingent upon the recognition of others' rights. If that really is your opinion, then that would go a long way to explaining why you appear to think that the Palestinians' claim to the right to govern all of what is now Israel, does not have to be measured against the likelihood that the Palestinians would respect and protect the rights of Jewish residents of what used to be Israel.
Actually your philosophy would also lead to saying the Palestinians should get their land back but you lack objectivity to see this. But you do understand it since you say,
Don't, by the way, start saying, "But you're a hypocrite because the Jews have forfeited THEIR rights by behaving badly."
Failure to appreciate that wouldn't make you a hypocrite it would make you biased / prejudiced.
If you don't think that bad behavior can cause somebody to forfeit his rights, then the alleged bad behavior of the Israelis is, quite simply, an irrelevance.
It's irrelevent to YOUR bizarro system. Under the usual system Israel never had a right to take someone else's land to begin with so no forfeiture is necessary. Under your system I have a right to steal and kill as long as I am considered a "good" or worthy person / group so if I steal something then I have a right to keep it which I must forfeit.
Do you believe that a person who does not respect the basic human rights of others, can still demand that his own rights be respected?
Duh. That is what a "right" means. In fact it is the DUTY of all people of good nature to guarantee that persons rights. That's what the word "right" means A duty on other people to enforce claims by the person holding the right.
Do you believe that "the Palestinians" (leaving aside for the moment the question of how you would resolve the hypostasization) have some sort of corporate inalienable right to political control of all that is currently Israel?
No, just the parts taken from them by Israel. Not the Golan Heights. That belongs to the Syrians. I think Israel has also occupied part of Lebannon. (They are very agressive as a nation). Do they still occupy parts of Egypt too? Anyway you get the idea. The land should be returned to its owners because stealing is wrong. In your system stealing is not wrong if you are a "good" person.
do you hold that this right will remain their right whether or not they...
Rights are non-negotiable. They are inherent. What you meant to ask perhaps is if I would perceive any conflicting right. I do not but might do if the circumstances altered.
Concerning the next few questions maybe you ought to supply your own answer too?
If an area of America were overwhelmingly populated by white people of fundamentalist Christian culture, but was ruled (thanks to a brutal civil war) by a bunch of damn Yankees who had conquered the area by force and imposed upon the white fundamentalists a government which they resented, would that make this area "white fundamentalist Christians' land" and give "white fundamentalist Christians" corporately an inalienable and perpetual right to govern, without regard to whether they respected the rights of anyone living in their midst who was not a white fundamentalist Christian?
Yes.
But if that right came into conflict with the rights of others (eg the right of a black man to vote) there would be a conflict which a court would have to decide on.
To put it a different way, was the authority of the United States over the former states of the Confederacy a valid authority during, say, the first twenty years after the Civil War?
I think this is a different question and I answer "no". IMO the Southern States had a right to seceed from the union because they held their own sovereignty. This right overrides the interests of the wider community IMO - the right of the Union to remain intact. At the time the rights of slaves and indians was simply ignored by both sides.
If large numbers of Mexicans were to identify Fundamentalistan as a place where they wanted to make a new Mexican homeland, and they began to buy land from many of the white fundamentalists and (with the permission of the damn Yankee government then in power) to settle large tracts of land that were not being used by anybody, and they tried to talk as many of their wetback friends and relatives as possible to move there as well so that there would be enough Mexicans to effectively control the government, would the white fundamentalists be justified in saying that "their" land was being "invaded" and "stolen"?
I think you know my answer there ("yes").
In that same scenario, if some of the white fundamentalists were to organize a Klu Klux Klan, the most vocal member of whom was recognized as the leading white fundamentalist Christian authority in the region and who was a big fan of Adolph Hitler, and if they were to begin a campaign of killing Mexican settlers, would you consider their behavior a just defense of their right to "their own country"?
I think your questions are not very veiled if you pretend they are general. The right (as with all rights) of self defence is not dependent on the politics of the holder of that right. Whether an act is self defence relies on such things as, (1) who started it, (2) how much danger are you in, (3) minimal / proportionate use of force, (4) reasonable expectation of success, (5) limited extent of force - ie that it is used to defend not to start another round of fresh attacks. Under your theory I assume none of that would matter and all that would matter would be whether the guy was "good" or "evil" which you judge based on your prejudices.
You don't give enough detail to answer. Is violence already on-going? Is the occupation violent? Is it seen as legitimate? Are the immigrants a direct violent threat? Etc.
If in response the Mexicans armed themselves in order to defend themselves against the KKK, would you consider them justified in so doing?
Same answer as above. Because it's the same question.
If the Mexicans then proceed to fight back and start killing members of the KKK, would you consider that self-defense, or an act of invasion, or what?
Sometimes it's hard to tell who started fighting or else who in the course of fighting escalated violence beyond the limits of proportionality that they had a right to under the right of self defence. People understand all this and so usually both sides claim the other guy started it or that the other guy escalated. However in the case of the Israeli land grab it's pretty damn easy to tell isn't it?
If some of the white fundamentalists' political leaders (say, for example, the Secretary-General of the White Fundamentalist Christian League) were to announce that the white fundamentalists were going to make war on the Mexicans, saying publicly, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre," would you consider that the land still belonged (in some sort of corporate sense) to the white fundamentalist Christians?
Once again rights do not disappear because of your political views. The right to defend another is essentially the same as the right of self-defence. Again sovereignty as a right does not get forfeited because someone says something bad -- even if everyone agrees it's bad. However saying it and doing it are two different things. An actual massacre or extermination would constitute (presumably) an escalation out of proportion for any need of force for purposes of defence of other and therefore falls outside the right of self defence and would imply such rights in the victim.
In fact most of the rules of the right to self defence are just the way courts have ruled on conflicting rights. In this case the right of self defence is in conflict with the right of the bad guys to not get killed by the person they are attacking. Naturally courts have more sympathy with the victim but they do limit the right of self defence to proportionality because of the conflict. Of course if the initial attack is already lethal then the defender's lethal response is proportionate. But if someone just tries to say punch you in the face you can't just shoot them. I assume that under your system the right of self defence would mean you could do whatever you want to the other guy, kill him, torture him, whatever, if you were considered "good" by the prejudiced opinion. On the other hand if you were considered "bad" your system says you have to just stand there and have the other guy kill you without lifting a finger in your own defence.
Posted by: DavidByron | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 10:51 PM
DB:
As you have established your credentials as an anti-Semite, ...if it is not too much trouble could you provide some background on what person influenced you the most? What did you study in college? What philosopher has had a profound impact on your life?
For those who will defend DB, if any, I am not trying to stop him from speaking. I'm trying to understand the influences that led to his current theory and "solution" for the problems of our age.
Posted by: Washington | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 10:00 PM
The authors are guilty of committing the cardinal sin in US politics,
namely that Israel is the elephant in the house. It's time for a
second Declaration of Independence. I won't trust that task on George
and his Christian fascists.
America should have that (but forced) type or relationship (voluntarality) with Britain - a former colony, yes, but a damn good ally.
That 'whore' over the Atlantic, I would fight for, but I would take
a singel American with the name Alistair, Joe, Jackson and Gonzales
rather than a thousand Netanyahus.
Posted by: Adanm Shire | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 09:48 PM
Huh. Another big post appeared while I was writing all that.
Posted by: DavidByron | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 09:42 PM
Looking back over the three comments you've made I wondered if perhaps there were two different people posting under the same name. Your first comment was theoretical and measured. Very reasonable. The second comment was all about Palestine and trying to persuade me that Jews were good and Palestinains were evil. It was racist. It wasn't just the comments I highlighted, it was the entire post. The words, the meaning and as far as I can tell, the intent and the assumptions it was based on.
It does tie into your concept of "rights" though. As I said before your concept of rights are not rights because they have to be earned. They are privileges. Yes, you nit-picked and pointed out that babies start off with the rights by default in your system. Well... unless they are Palestinian babies I suppose. You claimed it was a forfeiture system. Basically the same thing. The point is that whereas in a rights system there is equality, under your system there is prejudice. Someone decides who gets treated humanely and who gets told they are monsters who don't deserve rights. In your second post you made this very clear by telling everyone that Jews deserve rights and Palestinians do not. Your "rights" system is the negation of real rights and it's the oposite of the liberal system represented by the US constitution which eg. guarantees free speech for both popular and unpopular ideas (indeed defending the unpopular is the whole point).
You say you want to understand my views here. My views here are nothing more than the standard liberal ideals of human rights that have been the rule for the last two centuries in any good government. How is it then that you need an explanation of them? I do beleive a lot of strange things as the world judges it but on human rights my view is quite normal. The only odd thing about it is that I actually beleive it and apply it to situations like Palestine.
The sort of question you ask me --- isn't this really rather trivial elementary stuff? Your answer though is novel. It's like you're trying to re-invent the wheel.
If you do not believe that freedom of religion is contingent upon respect for the religious freedom of others, then on what grounds – if any – would you object to the pending execution of an Afghan convert from Islam to Christianity, given that a majority of Afghans are Muslims who believe their religion requires them to secure the execution of apostates?
Well DUH. On the grounds that killing people is wrong. Your answer doesn't even make sense. Let's say these Afghans want to kill the guy not for his religion but because his hair is red. The hypothetical Afghans with their own religion might claim they fully respect other religions. Great. No religious conflict. So under your bizzaro set of rules that means they can kill the guy, right? And if you object to that then it's YOU who isn't respecting other religions so YOU should have no right to freedom of religion yourself. Now back to the Christian. Does that Christian respect the Muslim faith? From what you are saying I'd say that you do not respect the muslim faith. That means you or any other christian ought to not be accorded any rights to respect a religion, right? You forfeit that right. Under your bizzaro logic that is. That in turn means that they can go ahead and execute christians as much as they like while still respecting other religions that count (the non-christian ones).
Who gets to choose who is respecting whose religion? You've thrown out rights and replaced them with a system of prejudice. That only seems sensible to you because you think you'll be the one whose prejudices get to decide. That's nothing but the rule of the jungle. Well in Afghanistan guess what? You aren't the one who gets to decide. It's some guy with a turban and a beard.
Do you fancy yourself a good judge? Well I certainly don't, having read your remarks. I'd consider you a very biased judge. You say Palestinians should have no rights because they are evil. I wonder if they see it differently?
The way this sort of problem is usually resolved within a rights based system --- including English law of course --- is by considering this to be a conflict between two equally valid rights. The right to religious practise vs the right to not be killed. There is certainly no conflict between two different religions here. If the guy was an atheist would it be ok to execute him in your system?
Your American judges do this sort of balancing of conflicting rights all the time in making their decisions. Nothing I am saying here is at all unusual.
If a group of people wish to establish a government whose very purpose is the violation of the rights of members of the Other, is there any way in which government of that group of people, by that group of people and for that group of people can be legitimate, in your view?
This is a ridiculous question. If it acts as a government then it is a government regardless of whether you dislike it's non-governmental aspects. If the people give their consent then it's legitimate.
Please note that I am asking a question about general principles; it is precisely your general principles, rather than the specifics of the Israeli/Palestinian quarrel, that interest me.
I call Bullshit. You say this because you want to figure out a way to turn your prejudices against Palestinians into a logical way to deny their rights and thus justify the crimes of the Israelis (meaning the government / leadership). But every time you'll hit the same issue: who decides? In your system of privileges / forfeitures someone has to decide who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Who are the deserving and who can be killed without remorse. You skip over this above by just assuming that the hypothetical government's "very purpose is the violation of the rights". Who decides that? You claim based on your prejudice that Palestinains deserve no government because they are evil people. But I say it is the Israelis (ie their government) who have acted evily in the past. The fact that you deny this so easily points out the problem with pretending there's an objective judgement that everyone would agree to. The solution is equal rights for all.
It does help, I have to say, to understand that you consider that the Palestinians had some sort of right not to have a bunch of Jews move in and ruin the neighborhood...but that still appears at first blush to be a group-oriented right: “This is Our land and They’re not welcome.”
This smacks of game playing. Are you serious? The right you mention is universally recognised. Every country has immigration rules and the US constitution guarantees the right of assembly. A basic function of government is regulating the commons and applying laws. None of this is at all unusual yet you pretend it is. Why?
I am not interested in whether it is common for political cultures to resent, complain about and take up arms against mass immigration by the Other, an unquestionable but irrelevant truth. For that matter it used to be common for political cultures to rationalize slavery
Are you asking me to justify immigration policy, freedom of assembly and the regulation of the commons as government goods (ie legitimate actions) on the basis of individual rights? Well I guess that isn't so hard but why bring this up? Are you against immigration limitations?
I am interested in your philosophy of human rights, and in whether your constant references to the “rights” of Palestinians en masse and the “actions” of Jews en masse can survive translation into terms of fundamental individual-level human rights and actions, and if so, what you conceive the fundamental individual-level human rights to be.
I can't help noticing you don't have any problem with the Jews having collective rights as a government, just the Palestinians. Also I have never referenced the actions of Jews en masse because Jews don't all do the same things so that concept is meaningless. I have referenced the actions of some Jews, (and perhaps non-Jews) who particpated in attacking the Palestinians and driving them off their land so as to create and expand the boundaries of the State of Israel.
If your political philosophy turns out to be rationally consistent, then we can worry about whether you have applied it properly to the empirical facts of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. If your philosophy is incoherent and inconsistent, why then no matter what the empirical facts may be, you will find a way to arrive at the conclusion your personal prejudices and antipathies demand, in which case there is no point arguing about the empirical facts (and in which case I will have no interest in further conversation).
Well we can quit now then because I don't think any system of ethics is 100% consistent unless it's trivial (such as "everything goes"). The position I am arguing is simply the established concept of right and wrong. The system just about everyone beleives in and that is the basis of our laws. If that system is inconsistent, and I think it is, then we have no choice but to try and apply it as best we can regardless. It's not like there's a consistent alternative.
People aren't going to quit having immigration laws because you can demonstrate an inconsistency. You would be on to something if you could demonstrate your ideas were MORE consistent of course. Nevertheless I think it would not be too hard to justify collective rights from indivual rights if you simply accept that the indivdual has a stake in maintaining a well regulated community. If you don't accept that then you're so far off the map that discussion won't be possible.
you talk constantly in terms of groups, that group-language is highly problematic and generally indicative of sloppiness and imprecision in thought, that the validity of group-language depends upon its validity when translated into individual actions, and that that translation is a very complex and problematic affair
Well just because you don't like community rights doesn't mean that everyone here agrees with you. Biblically for example community rights were far more important. Indicvidual rights are really quite a recent idea. Look I don't mind helping you with the translation if you like but it really isn't THAT hard. I respect your wanting to reduce things to axioms though. Bare in mind that goes both ways. You should be able to justify individual rights in terms of community rights.
-----------------------------------------
I dealt with why I still think your statement about rights is really just a way to validate prejudice. (“it seems to me that those who do not respect the rights of others, have no claim to rights themselves”).
Now for the other statement I objected to ("“The Palestinians – as a group – do not desire power so that they can establish a sphere in which individual human rights are respected. They desire power so that they can exterminate the Jews.”").
This phrase "as a group" could mean a few things. I assumed you meant it to mean, "on the whole", "as a rule", "generally", "characteristically" and so on. This use of the phrase appears to be exactly what you meant and I repeat that it is racist.
At any rate, the most sophomoric and childish possible translation of group-language into individual language is...well, yours, which is implicitly: “That which is true of the group, is of necessity true of every member of the group.”
That distinction makes no difference (similar to your objection over rights being earned vs rights being forfeited). Either way you are characterising a whole birth group negatively. In both cases I did understand what you were saying and I repeated back to you my understanding of what you had said using slightly different words. You objected to my choice of words but what I said was functionally the same (ie both were racist and for the same reason).
My objections apply to your original statements and to my characterisations of them equally and identically. I did understand what you said. It's good that you replied by trying to challenge my characterisation but you jumped to conclusions in saying I didn't understand you.
As it happens, you have not convinced me that you are a racist, because I know that expressing generalizations about a particular culture does not constitute racism, even when said generalizations are negative.
I beleive it usually does indicate racism. In particular when the generalizations are drawn on the basis of the actions of just a few individuals or when the generalization is used to justify the elimination of unrelated human rights, both of which you did in my opinion.
Posted by: DavidByron | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 09:36 PM
David,
[grinning cheerfully] Oh, don't worry about it, I'm not upset. You're not doing me any harm. It's your own good standing in public opinion that you're damaging, not mine.
My point, David, was that when you say something like, "The acts of the Israelis precisely mirrored the acts of Hitler in removing Jews and Slavs to create a living space for the Aryan nation," you want us to interpret what you say generously, and to recognize that you mean, "The acts of the Israelis as a group, disproportionately influenced by actively hostile leaders who were not effectively resisted by those Israelis who were of good will, precisely mirrored the acts of Hitler in removing Jews and Slavs to create a living space for the Aryan nation." Or, "The acts of the Israeli government, over which government those Israelis who were people of good will were unable to exercise control, have been despicable."
Now, it's quite reasonable of you to ask us to interpret your remarks that way, and I am perfectly happy to accept that this is what you mean -- but you can't expect people to interpret your statements generously when you in your turn put the most malicious possible interpretation on what the other people say back to you. I hope that eventually you we be willing to admit that when people here say something like, "Their lives are full of hate" (a generalization that is valid of the Palestinians if ever it was valid of any culture), they also mean something like, "The society of the Palestinians is dominated by those who are full of hate, to such a degree that Palestinians who are motivated by love and forgiveness are unable significantly to influence the corporate behavior of their people" -- and that such a statement is not "racism." If it is not racist for you to say, "The Israelis have done such-and-such a bad thing," then it is not necessarily racist for others to say, "The Palestinians have done such-and-such a bad thing."
In short, I am recommending to you that you interpret with charity and generosity the opinions and statements of those who disagree with you, if only so that they will be more inclined to interpret your own highly controversial statements with charity and generosity.
Now, as far as, "Kenny, I'm not buying your explanation here. It doesn't make sense to me." -- [smiling cheerfully] Don't worry about it. I can tell that it doesn't make sense to you. If it will save time, just chalk me up as a racist and move on.
The core difference between us seems to lie in your conception of rights, in two respects.
(1) You seem to think very heavily in group terms. You are constantly saying thinks like, "If Israel wants a right to exist they can go and do it on their own land not the Palestinians'." But Israel does not "want" anything, except metaphorically, because "Israel" does not exist as an acting, feeling being. (Have you looked up the fallacy of hypostasization yet?) What exists is a whole bunch of individual Israelis. And when you speak of "the Palestinians' land," that could mean "all those individual plots of land that are owned by individual Palestinians or by groups of Palestinians." But that does not seem to be what you mean, because you appear (perhaps I misunderstand you) to consider that when the Jews came and bought a bunch of land from Palestinians who willingly sold it to them, that could only be acceptable if a sufficiently small number of Jews were involved; it's almost as though you think that the Palestinian community (in some ill-defined sense) should have been able to veto the desires of the individual Palestinians who sold too much land to the Jews. I doubt very much that that's what you really mean; but my point is that I can't tell what it is that you do mean precisely.
You talk of the "Palestinians' sovereignty" and the "Palestinians' rights," but you do so in ways that do not make sense if translated directly into individual terms -- yet you seem to consider that these "rights," whatever they are, have the same inalienable character as do the core individual rights referred to by the Declaration of Independence. And whatever your rules are for determining who has this ill-defined right to sovereignty, they aren't the ordinary rules that the rest of the world lives by (since you don't recognize the authority of the British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire), but some sort of rules you've apparently worked out for yourself. Now, I have no quarrel whatsoever with your working out your own rules because you don't like the rules of international law -- I myself reject several of the widely accepted principles of international law as inherently unjust. But you do understand that since you've made up your own rules, that means we don't know what your rules are or how you've applied them.
(2) You seem to think that a person can claim rights for himself even while having no intention whatsoever of respecting them in others. At least, that's what you seem to say when you reject my principle that the claim to one's own rights is contingent upon the recognition of others' rights. If that really is your opinion, then that would go a long way to explaining why you appear to think that the Palestinians' claim to the right to govern all of what is now Israel, does not have to be measured against the likelihood that the Palestinians would respect and protect the rights of Jewish residents of what used to be Israel.
Don't, by the way, start saying, "But you're a hypocrite because the Jews have forfeited THEIR rights by behaving badly." I'm trying to understand your views. If you don't think that bad behavior can cause somebody to forfeit his rights, then the alleged bad behavior of the Israelis is, quite simply, an irrelevance.
So, some basic questions for you:
1. Do you believe that a person who does not respect the basic human rights of others, can still demand that his own rights be respected?
2. Do you believe that "the Palestinians" (leaving aside for the moment the question of how you would resolve the hypostasization) have some sort of corporate inalienable right to political control of all that is currently Israel?
3. If so, do you hold that this right will remain their right whether or not they demonstrate themselves willing and able wield that power to ensure all residents' right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
As a separate set of questions, moving away from the specific example of the Israelis and Palestinians so that you can stick, as is your desire, to general principles:
1. If an area of America were overwhelmingly populated by white people of fundamentalist Christian culture, but was ruled (thanks to a brutal civil war) by a bunch of damn Yankees who had conquered the area by force and imposed upon the white fundamentalists a government which they resented, would that make this area "white fundamentalist Christians' land" and give "white fundamentalist Christians" corporately an inalienable and perpetual right to govern, without regard to whether they respected the rights of anyone living in their midst who was not a white fundamentalist Christian? To put it a different way, was the authority of the United States over the former states of the Confederacy a valid authority during, say, the first twenty years after the Civil War?
2. If large numbers of Mexicans were to identify Fundamentalistan as a place where they wanted to make a new Mexican homeland, and they began to buy land from many of the white fundamentalists and (with the permission of the damn Yankee government then in power) to settle large tracts of land that were not being used by anybody, and they tried to talk as many of their wetback friends and relatives as possible to move there as well so that there would be enough Mexicans to effectively control the government, would the white fundamentalists be justified in saying that "their" land was being "invaded" and "stolen"?
3. In that same scenario, if some of the white fundamentalists were to organize a Klu Klux Klan, the most vocal member of whom was recognized as the leading white fundamentalist Christian authority in the region and who was a big fan of Adolph Hitler, and if they were to begin a campaign of killing Mexican settlers, would you consider their behavior a just defense of their right to "their own country"?
4. If in response the Mexicans armed themselves in order to defend themselves against the KKK, would you consider them justified in so doing?
5. If the Mexicans then proceed to fight back and start killing members of the KKK, would you consider that self-defense, or an act of invasion, or what?
6. If some of the white fundamentalists' political leaders (say, for example, the Secretary-General of the White Fundamentalist Christian League) were to announce that the white fundamentalists were going to make war on the Mexicans, saying publicly, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre," would you consider that the land still belonged (in some sort of corporate sense) to the white fundamentalist Christians?
With respectful interest...
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 07:42 PM
David...To my knowledge Palestinians don't constitute a race of people. Therefore my stating the fact that Palestinians as a group at this point in history are a mess in every which way possible does not constitute a racist assumption. I therefore have not made a racist comment.
I think if they had it together, we would not be having this discussion. It would be a non-issue, just like nobody talks about those trouble making Swiss, or those angry Swedes, or those terrorists from Vermont who strap bombs to their cows.
I assume you derive some kind of vicarious pleasure in calling me a racist, and that's cool, have all the fun you want. It makes as much sense as calling me a doodoo head, or a pumpkin face.
Posted by: Raimondo | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 06:21 PM
I'll reply at length later. Kenny, I'm not buying your explanation here. It doesn't make sense to me. The most sense I can make of what you said remains my interpretation above, although I guess I'm more open to trying to figure out a different explanation than I was earlier. Obviously you are upset about what I wrote and I can understand that although it really doesn't help to just toss the same accusation back at me.
For example, every comment you post makes sweepingly condemnatory statements about the Jews of Palestine.
I've never done that, let alone in every comment. I posted the statements that you (and others) had made that led me to my conclusions and asked you to explain yourself (yes, implicitly - why the hell otherwise would I quote it? - yes I could have been nicer about it but frankly I was sick of the blatant racism from others in this thread, and you're right that that load of crap wasn't your fault)
You on the other hand clearly didn't want to ask me for an explanation of the hypothetical words you hypothetically interpreted as me being racist / negatively characterising Jews as a whole --- because otherwise you'd have quoted those words. As it is all I can do is ask you where did I make these hypothetical statements?
The only thing I can think is that you confused a statement about the israeli government policy with "jews". Something like "Israel does this ... XXX".
Having said all that -- yeah it's pretty tough the accusations I'm making about you here and I appreciate you keeping your head about this.
I don't have space to tell you now why I don't buy your explanations but thanks at any rate for starting to try to explain them. If you really think I was slamming Jews then get the quote please.
Posted by: DavidByron | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 03:01 PM
David my friend,
I think perhaps you’re trying to argue with too many people at once. That would account for the fact that you seem to be having trouble reading my posts carefully. If you would like, I can fall silent for a while until you have dealt with everyone else, and then we can resume our conversation when you have sufficient attention to spare.
I doubt that we disagree about the nature of human rights; I think it much more likely that you simply did not pay careful attention what I was saying, especially since whenever you restate what you think are my views, you clumsily misrepresent them – not just in this case, but consistently. (You are not, if I may speak frankly, a particularly good listener.) I do not believe that rights have to be earned. I do, however, believe that they can be forfeited. And so, I suspect, do you. Given your earlier appeal to the Declaration of Independence, I presume that you believe that human rights include the right to liberty. Do you, therefore, object to the existence of prisons on the grounds that if the right to liberty could be swept away, it would not be a right, but a privilege?
At a higher level, you and both, I think, believe strongly in the basic human right to choose and follow one’s own religion or lack thereof. But what if your religion tells you to burn at the stake others who do not choose to follow your religion? Should we allow you to wage a Spanish Inquisition on the grounds that you have a right to practice your own religion, even if we personally happen to find Spanish Inquisitions offensive? I myself, given my political principles, find this a trivially easy question to answer: of course not, because those who are unwilling to respect the right of others to religious freedom, cannot insist that others respect their right to religious freedom. If you do not believe that freedom of religion is contingent upon respect for the religious freedom of others, then on what grounds – if any – would you object to the pending execution of an Afghan convert from Islam to Christianity, given that a majority of Afghans are Muslims who believe their religion requires them to secure the execution of apostates?
The Declaration of Independence would seem to tie the legitimacy of government directly to its efficacy in the protection of individual human rights. If a group of people wish to establish a government whose very purpose is the violation of the rights of members of the Other, is there any way in which government of that group of people, by that group of people and for that group of people can be legitimate, in your view? Please note that I am asking a question about general principles; it is precisely your general principles, rather than the specifics of the Israeli/Palestinian quarrel, that interest me. You have said on this thread that you try to avoid specifics in order to talk principles. It has been rather hard to take you seriously, I have to say, since practically everything you post is full of accusations of bad behavior on the part of the Jews, and the only respect in which it those accusations are not “specific” is that they don’t come with links to allow others to check up on the accuracy of the accusations. But now is your chance to prove that you were not disingenuous.
There are, you know, some conversational rights that, while not qualifying as fundamental human rights, do constitute necessary conditions for civil and fruitful conversation in reasonable society. These include the right to have other people assume, until you have proven otherwise, that you have good intentions. They include the right to expect from other people that, when you seem to disagree with them, they will assume that the most likely explanations for the apparent disagreement are miscommunication or misunderstanding, or honest and well-meant confusion on your part, or that they themselves are in error, and thus that they will only as a last resort assume that the disagreement arises from moral depravity on your part. You might have noticed that I have respected your rights in both these respects in our conversation; I observe that you do not extend the same courtesy to others.
For example, every comment you post makes sweepingly condemnatory statements about the Jews of Palestine. Yet if anybody else observes that Palestinian behavior has been open to censure as well, you brand the others as “racist.” Do you not understand that when you condemn people as racist for doing what you yourself do, then the more you convince others that what you condemn really is racism, the more you convince others that you are yourself a contemptible racist? As it happens, you have not convinced me that you are a racist, because I know that expressing generalizations about a particular culture does not constitute racism, even when said generalizations are negative. But that just means that I continue to extend to you a courtesy that you are markedly unwilling to extend to any of those who disagree with you.
I will let other people correct your misstatements of their own positions, because I may not understand what they meant. But I can certainly speak to your inept interpretation of my statement that, “The Palestinians – as a group –... desire power so that they can exterminate the Jews.”
Now, let me walk you through this slowly, because it seems to confuse you.
I have already made it very clear that my biggest concern about your views as expressed on this thread, is that you talk constantly in terms of groups, that group-language is highly problematic and generally indicative of sloppiness and imprecision in thought, that the validity of group-language depends upon its validity when translated into individual actions, and that that translation is a very complex and problematic affair. And I don’t know what more I could have done in that very sentence to emphasize the distinction between group-language and individual-level-language, than to include the phrase “as a group,” set off with em-dashes. Perhaps if I had said, “The Palestinians – AS A GROUP!!!!!!!! – do not desire power so that they can establish a sphere in which individual human rights are respected,” you would have noted the distinction. The Palestinians, as individuals, are a mix of people some of whom are well-intentioned, some of whom are racist but not actively violent, and some of whom are murderous; but the Palestinians AS A GROUP!!!!!!!! have chosen Hamas as their most representative agent. The fact that my own analysis of the voting would seem to show that Hamas was elected by a minority of Palestinians, and therefore is not truly representative of the majority, does not change the fact that insofar as the Palestinians are capable of acting corporately, they have wielded that capacity for action by investing Hamas with their corporate authority, and that their corporate actions for the immediate future will be determined by the character of Hamas.
At any rate, the most sophomoric and childish possible translation of group-language into individual language is...well, yours, which is implicitly: “That which is true of the group, is of necessity true of every member of the group.” This is, of course, the logical fallacy of division, and is avoided by all reasonable persons. You have made any number of sweeping statements about the genocidal and terrorist habits of the Jews of Palestine; may we conclude from those statements that you are a racist who believes that every single Jew in Palestine is a genocidal terrorist? I, at least, do not draw that conclusion about you. That is because I am a sensible person. I would encourage you to develop some good sense yourself, if you wish to be taken seriously in grown-up discussions.
You still, clearly, have not grasped the distinction I am trying to make between group rights and human rights. My whole field of interest – as I have said – arises from the fact that I think that the statements, “The Palestinians, AS A GROUP!!!!!!!!, have the right to govern the entire area of Israel/Palestine,” and, “Palestinians, as individuals, have the right not to be subjected to violence or fraud as long as they haven’t started it,” are not only two different questions, but two different kinds of questions. I don’t expect you to have any interest in my own views, and I am only asking you to help me understand yours. But if you are not going to trouble to understand my views, then it would be sensible of you not to attempt to tell people what I “really” mean. What I think about the idea of human rights for Palestinians (a question of individual human rights) is quite distinct from what I think about the proposition that the Jews of Israel, and for that matter the Palestinians themselves, should be required to live under a government likely to be dominated by the likes of Yasser Arafat and Hamas. How I move from a firm belief in the human rights of individual residents of Israel and Palestine (which is a fundamental philosophical and ethical position) to a position on the nature of the practically achievable government most likely to ensure those residents’ rights (which is a pragmatic and empirical piece of guesstimating) is, I’m quite sure from what you’ve had to say on the topic, very different from how you would proceed.
But just because I know you what your reasoning is not (namely, the same as mine), doesn’t mean that I understand what your reasoning is. You might be somewhat more careful about leaping to the conclusion that you understand others’. In particular, you are very fond of the line of argument that runs, “If, after a hasty and careless reading of other’s posts, I can leap to the conclusion that their apparent position is stupid, then that means that they are evil racist people.” This makes you look neither intelligent nor kind.
At any rate, I will waste no more time on my own motives nor on my own thoughts on the Israeli/Palestinian mess. I want to understand your political philosophy, which I still cannot get into focus. It does help, I have to say, to understand that you consider that the Palestinians had some sort of right not to have a bunch of Jews move in and ruin the neighborhood...but that still appears at first blush to be a group-oriented right: “This is Our land and They’re not welcome.” Would you mind explaining – I’m asking this in a curious, not sarcastic, tone of voice – what distinction you would draw between such an attitude on the part of the Palestinians, and the attitude of the white folks of Durant, Oklahoma who in the 1980’s had for years successfully cooperated in refusing to sell any of the property in “their” town to “undesirables” (to whom the Duranters used openly to refer as “niggers”)? I presume you draw a distinction; it would be enlightening to know what that distinction is, precisely.
Please remember that I am not interested in whether it is common for political cultures to resent, complain about and take up arms against mass immigration by the Other, an unquestionable but irrelevant truth. For that matter it used to be common for political cultures to rationalize slavery, as well as to resent, complain about and take up arms against persons who dared to disagree with the holy and infallible opinions of the Vicar of Christ. I could hardly care less. I am interested in your philosophy of human rights, and in whether your constant references to the “rights” of Palestinians en masse and the “actions” of Jews en masse can survive translation into terms of fundamental individual-level human rights and actions, and if so, what you conceive the fundamental individual-level human rights to be. If your political philosophy turns out to be rationally consistent, then we can worry about whether you have applied it properly to the empirical facts of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. If your philosophy is incoherent and inconsistent, why then no matter what the empirical facts may be, you will find a way to arrive at the conclusion your personal prejudices and antipathies demand, in which case there is no point arguing about the empirical facts (and in which case I will have no interest in further conversation).
If you are interested in pursuing this topic further with me, then I will, if you don’t mind, subject you to quite a bit of clarifying questioning. (As a general rule, people who are interested in other person’s opinions ask lots of questions. In which regard, as an aside, you might count the number of times in this thread that you have asked somebody to clarify what he meant before simply accusing the other person of meaning something evil and racist.) If you don’t want to spend any more time on this, I certainly understand and will not at all consider you an intellectual coward or anything.
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 01:29 PM
Raimondo's racist judgment of the Palestinian people:
(1) they have no collective will - so deserve to have their land stolen
(2) they are lazy, primitive, disorganized
(3) they are "messy
(4) they cannot manage themselves -- so it's good that they have no freedom
(5) they squabble incessantly even with their friends
(6) their lives are full of hate
(7) they destroy even their own property
(8) they have no self discipline
(9) they cannot solve their own problems
(10) they are a mess
(11) they are always complaining
And then we have Washington applauding this racist description, which reminds me of the way Hitler described the Jews in Mein Kampf. Except you forgot to say Raimondon, do you think Palestinians smell bad? That's a serious question by the way. I was asked if I hate Jews. I'd like to ask you in all seriousness. In your view to Palestinians have a bad odour?
Now I listed a bunch of the racist stuff people were saying about Palestinians in this thread but as it happens not one of the quotes was by you even though all the statements above were made by you I didn't include them in the list. It's interesting that you just assumed I was quoting you though.
For you to simplify my view into a group of ludicrous slogans..is well..ludicrous.
Well I wasn't. But I have done just now. And I don't think it's ridiculous. Your attitude is clearly racist and I assume that your racism is what informs your opinion on the Palestinian issue.
My own views are often much simpler than most and taken out of personal experience rather than political theory...I also don't think too many people who post here are total irrational Republican party hacks
Nobody has put forward any political theory that explains why one people should be allowed to attack another and take their land. Instead what I've had back as a reply is mud slinging at the palestinians or else the opposite, an attempt to say that the Jews were such angelic people that they ought to be allowed a bit of ethnic cleansing.
But your right. it's easy for a newcomer like me to take the general tenor of the language and apply it to all of the people, to get confused over who was saying what. I would say that you and Kenny and brian and Saul were the main source of the racist arguments. But now I look back even NNW was making the same argument but in a more sophisticated manner. At the time I wondered to myself, "What on earth does he think all of this has to do with the question of the use of force to take land?" Now I can see he was just trying to tell me that I needn't worry about the rights of Palestinians because they were just undermenschen.
I'm not sure if Sigmund managed to avoid racism towards Palestinians but he came out with a few humdinger racist comments about native Americans.
I don't think that was the case with Rob, Alexandra or Michael, and some others are borderline. I guess I'll have to go back over everything that was said again, if I have the stomach for it.
But since this is such an issue now, how does everyone respond? If it was some other group of people being occupied how would peoiple respond? If the demonic scum Palestinians were the ones attacking the angelic Jews would attitudes here be different to the conflict? if palestinains were the ones occupying Jewish land would people suddenly realise that taking someone else's land and throwing them off by force is wrong?
How is your opinion informed on a subject? If you don't have an answer, if you don't have a principled answer based on the most basic facts, the facts that are common ground, then will you not be easily influenced by prejudiced attitudes around you?
Posted by: DavidByron | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 10:02 AM
Mr. Byron
Taken individually, Arabs in general are extremely lively intelligent people. At least the ones I know, both Muslim and Christian. They are extremely aware of their political situation and all the byzantine turns an folds within their society, much more so than we can ever be.
For you to simplify my view into a group of ludicrous slogans..is well..ludicrous.
I submit that the ones I know are more priviledged than the average "street Arab". In my comments I usually try to distinguish between the individual and the masses.
As a mass, the Palestinians are a total and utter mess, no matter which way you cut it. Events and mass behavior speak for themselves.
The slogans don't really apply...unless you are attempting to rabble rouse. My very short experience with this group of bloggers is that they are not rabble. Each person seems to posess individual views. My own views are often much simpler than most and taken out of personal experience rather than political theory...I also don't think too many people who post here are total irrational Republican party hacks...at least I don't get that impression...You're often arguing with a pretty educated and well rounded bunch here.
Posted by: Raimondo | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 09:00 AM
Raimondo:
You are correct. The Palestinians define themselves by their hatred for the Jews.
Others are a little less overt about it...but we know who I am talking about.
Posted by: Washington | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 07:07 AM
Arabs are, according to posters here:
"bloodthirsty suicidal child killing maniacs"
"wanton murder of innocents"
"bloodthirsty and ruthless"
"terrorists"
"rejoice in the slaughter"
"barbaric slaughterfests for the joy of killing"
"frothing bloodthirsty mob"
Kenny is more sophisticated about it:
"The Palestinians -- as a group -- do not desire power so that they can establish a sphere in which individual human rights are respected. They desire power so that they can exterminate the Jews"
Wow. All Palestinians hate human rights and love killing. Every single one of them. And what does Kenny think of the idea of human rights for the Palestinains?
"it seems to me that those who do not respect the rights of others, have no claim to rights themselves"
So is this the real reason why Republicans tend to back the Israelis regardless of how immoral the actions of the Israelis are?
Posted by: DavidByron | Friday, March 24, 2006 at 12:30 AM
Washington you said it:
The key thing is the will. To form a national identity the key is a collective will. Israel is a newly formed nation, and that does not sit too well with its neighbors, who have been lazy for generations, who can't even make the transition from nomad herders to agriculturalists, let alone catch up with urban, highly organized and militarily effective Israel.
The fact is that the Palestinians are a disorganized retrograde messy group as a whole. (I always make exceptions for self realized individuals and there are a few, but not a critical mass within the Palestinian group as a whole)
Also the idea itself of a Palestinian national identity, is borrowed from those they hate so much, the Jews. Before that they were under the Ottomans and then under the British, now it seems when they are given some land to manage they can't do it.
Right after Sharon gave Gaza, the first thing they did was destroy greenhouses that hade been donated to them, and then they quickly proceeded to squabble incessantly with their Arab neighbors the Egyptians. The Egyptian borders quickly became a no man's land.
Without self discipline, they can gripe all they want, even if Israel were to miraculously disappear the Palestinians would not be able to solve their own problems. They are a mess!
Posted by: Raimondo | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 10:59 PM
The United States will continue to support Israel and should any nation move against her now they would face removal of their ability to govern. Those anti-Semites who hide behind rhetoric can whine. They can protest. But it is reality. And shall be that way for the forseeable future.
Let's not forget that Israel controls her own destiny, insofar as the response to threats. No country will act as swiftly to defend herself than Israel. Left, right, center-whoever is in power will move against the Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians, Iranians - threats -if the need arises. This is what drives the anti-Semites crazy-Israel has the means to respond and also has the will.
Posted by: Washington | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 06:30 PM
With all due respect to the prior postings, it seems that the thread of the argument has been obliterated. The relevent question is not whether or not Israel has a right to exist. The question is not whether or not Israeli history is noble or not. The question is: Should the United States continue unqualified and unequival support for Israel?
Posted by: jansuz | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 05:11 PM
Some are saying I haven't backed up my case with facts, or sources. In general when I am arguing like I am now in an environment where a lot of people have a completely different view of "the facts" I try to avoid as much as possible arguing over the facts because it never gets anywhere. Instead I find it more profitable to argue over principles and establish some simple base ground from the most basic facts that have the most chance of common agreement. As a result my case relies on very very few facts so i don't know what people are talking about when they say I haven't sourced what I am saying.
Let me recap what I see as my argument and the arguments of those opposed. I do this to respond to the charge that I haven't backed up my case with facts.
I am saying that the Palestinians were living in the land prior to the arrival of massive numbers of Jewish immigrants. Is this fact disputed? I don't think so except Saul now wants to claim the Jews were in the majority in Palestine in the 19th century, but I don't think anyone agrees with him, and now he seems to be backing down and saying he only meant to say that for Jerusalem itself.
I am also saying that to create the State of Israel and to extend its borders the Israelis used force remove the local Palestinians from their home. Again this is so basic I don't think anyone has denied it.
And that's all the facts I've claimed here. And all I need to claim.
Now my opponents have a different tactic. They make racist and ad-hominem attacks upon the Palestinians as a people and constantly throw mud around hoping that people will accept that it's ok to murder and kill Palestinians because Palestinians are evil, nasty, immoral and degraded nazis whereas Jews are wonderful moral hardworking "democratic" people. Rather than deny the crimes of the Israelis they seek to justify those crimes through anti-Palestinian propaganda. By contrast I have never once suggested that Jews are immoral as a people or even that the acts of the Zionist leaders were evil solely because of the character of those leaders. My case is that what the Israelis did was evil because ethnic cleansing and grabbing land by means of force is itself an evil act. I've never claimed as part of my argument that Israelis massacred Palestinians -- though they did. I've never had to claime Zionist leaders were like nazis -- though they were. These items are not relevent. Arguing about facts like that is not profitable.
My case is simple and principled: the Palestinians were living peacefully until the Israelis violently took that land. That's a crime.
Posted by: DavidByron | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 03:23 PM
Washington: I am afraid that you may be correct about him.
Posted by: Saul Davis | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 12:43 PM
Mr. Byron:
Cite your sources and provide links to the data that back up your statements. If Saul stops paying attention others will certainly follow suit. You have erred badly on this subject. By all means provide some historical data that is verifiable by those of us who debate with you.
Saul: I think Mr. Byron is a sophist. Thus, any citations are not going to come forth.
Posted by: Washington | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 12:33 PM
I have read your last post to Kenny Pierce: You make statements and arguments that are simply Arab propaganda -- again with no links or bona fide citations to real evidence; I have concluded that this will probably be my last response to your posts, and I will probably completely disregard them in the future because they are simply not fact based nor a reasonable perception of what has historically occurred in Israel.
Posted by: Saul Davis | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 12:12 PM
Mr. Byron: You continuously make statements that castigate the Israelis, with explanations of your statements that make no sense to me; I have asked you a number of times for evidence -- links, citations to recognized real authorities (again, OTHER than such as Edward Said and his ilk, or UN Commission reports by those who practice that which they accuse the Israelis), or citations to the NY Times, or other reliable newspapers of the period, etc., that support your purported factual statements; where are the facts that support your statement that Jews and Christians were a minority in Jerusalem or Israel; I have seen an official report of the British Consul to the contrary for the mid-1800s; I would like to see FACTS AND FIGURES that show the actual Muslim population in Jerusalem and in Israel from the 12th century through the 19th century; where is the EVIDENCE of actual "massacres" by Jews of non-jews in Israel from the period of Ottoman rule through '49; I have seen citations to NY Times articles that contradict the accusations you make; I have provided you with a link that contains a wealth of information that contradicts your accusations; you have not provided ANY bona fide evidentiary support for your allegations, and some highly scurrilous contentions to date; the only reasonable conclusion is that these contentions and accusations are completely without support. As such, your opinions are basically ad hominem attacks on a people/race/nation (take your choice) that have been horribly persecuted for thousands of years by Europeans, Arabs, Turks etc.; it is always easy to blame the Jews; they appear to be the historical scapegoat.
Posted by: Saul Davis | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 12:08 PM
Here I sharply disagree with Kenny:
it seems to me that those who do not respect the rights of others, have no claim to rights themselves
If rights can be swept away then they are not rights. If this is what you believe then you don't believe in rights for anyone as I view them. If rights have to be earned, have to be "deserved" they are privileges.
Do you have any reason -- any reason at all -- to believe that a government dominated by Palestinians would, at any time in the entire history of the world, have respected the basic human rights of Jews?
Well they did so prior to the present troubles (ie before the mass immigrations which preceeded the 1946 troubles) for centuries so the answer is of course, "yes". But is there any reason to beleive Jews would treat Palestinians with basic respect? They haven't done so far. A demographic minority that wishes to hold all the power must practise apartheid as the Israeli government does. The demographic majority doesn't need to fear the minority in the same way. Look at how South Africa worked out.
the entire history of that area in the past century seems to show that Palestinians are far more ready to use whatever power they can obtain to inflict deadly violence on Jews than vice versa
I'm not sure what you could mean. Muslims have a great reputation for religious tolerance although the Palestinians per se were not the ones in charge. It was usually some big empire or other setting any policy.
Under British sovereignty, the Jews of Palestine immigrated legally to Palestine
Not legally. The British didn't have sovereignty. They were conquerors. Many Jews immigrated even without the aproval of the British. This is a major issue because whereas nobody minds if a few foreigners turn up every single people on earth would have reacted as the Palestinians did to a virtual invasion of the country by a vast number of immigrants. No European country or America would have accepted so many Jewish immigrants even in terms of absolute numbers let alone relative numbers. Are you going to tell me that America would happily accept the immigration of 150 million Mexicans for example? Let alone that many of the newcomers expressly came desiring to overturn the government and grab land by force? That the British condoned much of this is to their discredit but it does not change the immorality of the act. This sort of land grab is illegal and the UK had no right to do it. The Iranian president is entirely correct to point out the hypocrisy of forcing a huge influx of immigrants on the tiny nation of Palestine while the larger nations that pushed for this to happen were refusing Jewish immigrants.
These immoral acts by the British were bound to cause conflict which is exactly why such an act is illegal.
A government designed with the intent of oppression is illegitimate
That is the intent and design of the State of Israel. Certainly a Palestinian dominated country might have lingering hostility to Jews. Just as Whites in South Africa faced some problems at first. But the situation at the moment (apartheid / ethnic cleansing) is intolerable.
You are arguing that the Palestinian Arabs as a group should have the right to form their own government; indeed, you appear (perhaps I am misunderstanding you) to be arguing that Palestinian Arabs should have been given control of the whole of Palestine the moment the Union Jack was lowered.
Not Arabs, but Palestinians yes. Some are other races and religions.
you are (apparently) arguing this even though you know perfectly well that any Palestinian government that could possibly have obtained power in the last fifty years would have had Jewish property confiscation, and indeed genocide, at the top of its to-do list
Whereas you support the people who actually commited those crimes? what kind of an argument is that? Fifty years ago Palestinians had been subjected to Israeli occupation for 8 years. If their sovereignty had been restored at that point no doubt many would justifiably be angry with the people who oppressed them. But to use that justifiable anger as an excuse to favour the oppressor over their victims is bizarre and disgusting.
The Palestinians -- as a group -- do not desire power so that they can establish a sphere in which individual human rights are respected. They desire power so that they can exterminate the Jews. Their leaders have been saying so explicitly since the 1940's.
That's a racist accusation. Find me one such statement. The Israeli terrorist gangs' leaders DID make such statements quite frankly. They knew they could not create a Jewish only state without exterminating or removing the population there before them. They frankly acknowledged genocide was their only option to create Israel and they proceeded to commit those acts not in your imagination but in reality. The acts of the Israelis precisely mirrored the acts of Hitler in removing Jews and Slavs to create a living space for the Aryan nation. If you want to take over someone else's land then they have to be eliminated, either through killing or ethnic cleansing (removal of people of a certain ethnicity by force). Either way it's genocide under the terms of the convention. The early Israeli leaders knew this fact.
Posted by: DavidByron | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 11:55 AM
Kenny,
I agree that Mr. Byron's use of ethnic cleansing leads me to believe that he doesn't have a grasp on the term. I expect that he will have by now looked it up and will respond with a long winded post.
Posted by: Washington | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 06:20 AM
David,
Do you have any reason -- any reason at all -- to believe that a government dominated by Palestinians would, at any time in the entire history of the world, have respected the basic human rights of Jews?
The Declaration of Independence was written and agreed to by men who were (with the obvious exception of slavery) willing to respect those rights in others as well as themselves. But it seems to me that those who do not respect the rights of others, have no claim to rights themselves. What the Arabs were doing to Jewish residents of Palestine in 1946, clearly constituted gross violation of those Jewish individuals' rights. In fact the entire history of that area in the past century seems to show that Palestinians are far more ready to use whatever power they can obtain to inflict deadly violence on Jews than vice versa. You appeal to the Declaration of Independence; but can you really pretend that the Palestinians have ever desired political power for the purpose of safeguarding human rights -- not just the rights of Jews, but even the rights of Palestinians? During the years when Yasser Arafat was de facto leader of the Palestinians, and was foreign policy genius Jimmy Carter's noble Palestinian peacemaker of choice, which was more likely to get you killed: to be a Palestinian Arab in Jerusalem who publicly but peacefully objected to Israeli government policy, or to be a Palestinian Arab in Bethlehem who publicly but peacefully objected to Arafat's corruption and graft?
Under British sovereignty, the Jews of Palestine immigrated legally to Palestine, bought land, obeyed the laws, and started building lives for themselves. The Palestinian Arabs responded with death threats and actual deadly violence, and did everything in their power to make it clear that they were seriously intent on taking the Jewish individuals' lands and lives by force; to which threats the British government responded primarily with appeasement. When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinced a desire to reduce the Jewish residents of Palestine under absolute despotism, it was their right, it was their duty, to throw off the form of government to which they were subjected and to provide new guards for their future security.
I don't see how you can pretend that the Palestinians at any point in their history have been particularly interested in creating a government that safeguards individual human rights. But if the right to government is indeed derived solely from individual human rights -- if the sole purpose of legitimate government is indeed to secure the inalienable rights of individuals including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- then those whose design is entirely to destroy the lives and liberty of others, and to confiscate their property by violent means, can claim no right to form a government. At least, not if you genuinely believe in the relationship that the Declaration of Independence considers self-evidently to obtain between individual rights and the right to form a government. You will note that the Declaration of Independence does not imply that the only good government is a democracy, much less that any democracy is ipso facto a valid government. A government designed with the intent of oppression is illegitimate, even if the oppression is oppression of a minority by a majority and therefore the oppression is the result of democratic vote. A culture the majority of whose people do not respect the human rights of others, is a culture that can make no claim to any corporate rights at all, including the right of self-governance.
If you were asking that individual Palestinians be free from the threat of violence at the hands of the government, I would be entirely in agreement -- though even the most cursory examination of the last century of Middle Eastern history would show that Palestinians have had less to fear at the hands of the Israeli government than have Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular, had to fear from whichever Arab strongman happened to have the upper hand in the local Arab government at any given point. Any individual Arab might well be a person of good will, prepared to live and let live; and if such a person does not enjoy the benefit of the full panoply of inalienable human rights, then all is not yet what it needs to be. I am entirely on the side of anyone who wants to argue that point. But that is not what you are arguing. You are arguing that the Palestinian Arabs as a group should have the right to form their own government; indeed, you appear (perhaps I am misunderstanding you) to be arguing that Palestinian Arabs should have been given control of the whole of Palestine the moment the Union Jack was lowered. And you are (apparently) arguing this even though you know perfectly well that any Palestinian government that could possibly have obtained power in the last fifty years would have had Jewish property confiscation, and indeed genocide, at the top of its to-do list. The Palestinians -- as a group -- do not desire power so that they can establish a sphere in which individual human rights are respected. They desire power so that they can exterminate the Jews. Their leaders have been saying so explicitly since the 1940's.
In short, you might be able to oppose Israel on moral grounds derived from individual human rights, but any such moral grounds you might choose to use in order to disbar support for Israel as a corporate body, would seem to preclude, to a much greater degree, any support for Palestinian Arabs corporately. I can understand it when someone who values individual human rights looks at the Israelis and Palestinians and says, "A plague on both their houses." But when a person appears to say, "I value individual human rights, and therefore I support the cause of the mild-mannered, inoffensive, human-rights-respecting Palestinians against the oppressive, murderous Israelis; and indeed I want to hand control of all of Israel/Palestine, and to entrust the protection of the basic rights of every Israeli family, to the people who most recently have expressed their corporate will by electing Hamas into power," it's hard not to think you must not be hearing him correctly.
Now, where have I gone wrong in my reasoning?
Oh, to anticipate one objection: this is not a case of two wrongs making a right. When one is attacked, defending oneself by appropriate means is not wrong in the first place, and therefore there is only one wrong, not two.
P.S. In re "ethnic cleansing": "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 05:29 AM
Saul Davis,
the land historically belonged to the Jews, that a significant portion of the Jews were exiled, the land was basically barren, but retained either a majority population of Jews, or a plurality of Jews; given those facts, why should the "Palestinians" who did not exits before '47 possess a greater right to the land of Israel, than the Jews who have had a continued presence for thousands of years
I'm afraid you've been misled. There were of course some Jews and Christians throughout this period but they were a tiny minority. Had Jews been the majority of the residents of Palestine none of the present troubles would have arisen. There would have been no need for anyone to create a Jewish state artificially because Palestine would have been a de facto Jewish state already.
The use of force was necessary because the Israelis had to ethnically cleanse the great majority of the population who had been peacefully living in the land of Palestine for generations. (I don't mean the Ottomans - they were mostly absentee landlords - I mean the locals) In addition the Zionists encouraged many illegal immigrants to come to the land to try and drive out the original inhabitants demographically. In these two ways they created a "Jewish" state -- meaning one where Jews were a majority, barely. For this reason the Israelis refuse to allow the people they forced off their lands the right of return. Since no other country will have them either they have remained refugees for all this time waiting to go home.
Had your account been accurate it would of course fatally undermine the case I am making. But if you think about it doesn't make sense, and it is just not true.
Another point that has bothered me is your insistance that Jewish massacres occurred
Well this is a simple enough matter to confirm but unlike my opponents I have not chosen to try and make my case on the basis of emotional accusations. The case is simple: Israelis used military force to throw people off their land and to take it over. That is immoral and the use of force and ethnic cleansing should not be tolerated or rewarded. Now if you think one nation can throw another off it's land without massacres taking place well I would say that was at best naive, but nevertheless any hypothetical "bloodless" ethnic cleansic would still be utterly immoral.
The fact is the Palestinians were peacefully living there and the Israelis took their land at gunpoint. To this day they control the lives of Palestinians at gunpoint.
Posted by: DavidByron | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 12:37 AM
Sigmund you appear to have agreed that,
(1) the Israelis are occupying the Palestinians' land (you said, "As for the occupaton, that has proved to be the most beinign occupation in history")
(2) the Israelis have killed Plaestinians in that occupation ("Given Israel's military might, they have proved to be remarkably inept at killing Palestinians")
(3) the Israelis employed ethnic cleansing ("most Arabs left of their own volition")
Of course in agreeing to all these facts you try to put the best possible "spin" on these despicable acts. It's effectively holocaust denial by you. At any rate you've answered your own rhetorical question haven't you? ("What exactly did Israel do that was wrong? Please, be specific.")
Here's a link explaining Israel's apartheid policies including the fact that Arabs are denied political representation within Israel, even if you only consider the Arabs who are Israeli citizens and ignore the Palestinians living under the jackboot of Israel's military.
Any country that occupies another is no longer a democracy by simple virtue of the fact that it gives no representation to the occupied peoples, but in the case of Israel there are still too many Arabs that haven't yet been ethnically cleansed and so they cannot be allowed to form a party within the so-called democracy of Israel or else israel would be screwed by peaceful means. Naturally that must be prevented at all costs so Israel bans any party that would alter the law to give Arabs and Jews equal rights. That is incompatinble with a democracy.
Posted by: DavidByron | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 12:06 AM
David Byron (is that your real name?): Another point that has bothered me is your insistance that Jewish massacres occurred; there is significant dispute regarding that allegation; citation to Haggana writers is not helpful, because they had a pathological hatred for the Irgun; other writers of that time indicate that Deir Yassin had a well armed population that was prepared to massacre Jews; for another viewpoint, it may be appropriate for you to examine:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/deir_yassin.html
That site provides a completely different perspective on Deir Yassin.
Moreover, there is a long history of Arab massacres of innocent Jewish civilians, including young Jewish Talmudical students in Hebron and numerous other villages, who could not be considered dangerous under any stretch of the imagination; the Grand Mufti regularly incited Arabs to kill innocent unarmed Jews, and was a well-known Nazi collaborator who endorsed Hitler's extermination of the Jews; given these facts, why would it surprise objective viewers of history that an armed conflict between armed Arabs and armed Jews for the village of Deir Yassin, resulted in the deaths of many Arabs; that was part of the '48 War, and part and parcel of the Jews attempting to avoid extermination so closely after the Nazi efforts.
I would really like to see some empirical OBJECTIVE evidence from you that supports your allegations. By empirical and objective, I would exclude Edward Said and his ilk.
Posted by: Saul Davis | Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 12:03 AM
David Byron: I seem to be missing something here; you seem to insist that the Jewish Presence in Israel is either relatively recent, after the exile by the Romans about 2,000 years ago, or that there was no meaningful continued Jewish presence since the times of the Romans; do you have any empirical studies that support what you appear to argue? I have seen either reports or references to reports by the British Consul to the Ottoman Empire for that area, which clearly showed a significant Jewish presence in the mid-1800s; those reports also stated that the Jews constituted the majority of the city of Jerusalem; I have read a number of treatises that demonstrate a continued Jewish presence in Israel, and especially in Jerusalem, for at least 900 years (e.g., Nachmanides); I have read accounts of the crusades that disclosed a significant Jewish presence in various cities in Israel from that time, and especially in Jerusalem; these and other factors indicate that the land historically belonged to the Jews, that a significant portion of the Jews were exiled, the land was basically barren, but retained either a majority population of Jews, or a plurality of Jews; given those facts, why should the "Palestinians" who did not exits before '47 possess a greater right to the land of Israel, than the Jews who have had a continued presence for thousands of years. Furthermore, the British never owned the land of Israel; it was accorded a protectorate; finally, the Ottoman or Muslim ownership only occurred as a result of wars of conquest; why should that provide muslims with a greater right to Israel, than Jews who have lived there continuously for thousands of years? My recollection of translated passages of the Koran also indicates that Muhammed recognized that the land of Israel belonged to the Jews. I reeally do not understand the purported "factual" underpinnings for your contentions.
Posted by: Saul Davis | Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 11:44 PM
More BS (Byron stupidity)"BTW Israel is not a democracy and there are other democracies in the region; Israel practises apartheid like the old South Africa.."
Besides your rather now well recognized ill informed ideas, can you back that remark up?
Onwards to more BS: "This is another "two wrongs make a right" argument." What exactly did Israel do that was wrong? Please, be specific.
Further, the BS is indifferent to reality: Byron makes the assertion that most displaced Arabs were given the boot. As I noted in an earlier comment (predictably ignored) that in fact, most Arabs left of their own volition after being exhorted to do just that by Arab newspapers and radio broadcasts.
In another instance of BS, the claim is made that, "Israel is an extremely aggressive rogue state with a history of ethnic cleansing." Really, by whose standards? If you want to understand real ethnic cleanising, look at the GIA in Algeria, he janjaweed in Darfur, Yemen, Mauritania, and even East Timor.
Given Israel's military might, they have proved to be remarkably inept at killing Palestinians. In fact, if the Israelis really wanted masses of dead Palestinins, there would be masses of dead Palestinians.
As for the occupaton, that has proved to be the most beinign occupation in history.
Israel provided health care, education, sanitary infrastructure, reliable electricity, an education system and medical and hospital facilities- none of which Jordan or Egypt had bothered to provide.
Try again, pipsqueak.
Stay true to form and don't bother to address these realities.
Posted by: Sigmund, Carl And Alfred | Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 11:11 PM
Eexcellent comment by Washington:
"When a country ceases to be able to defend itself that right is often TAKEN away."
Let that be a warning to us all. If you truly are a peacenick, you have to be prepared to be like the rabbi who gave everything to the thief because he said that it belonged to God anyway...Very few people, let alone nations are capable of truly turning the other cheek...
There will always be bad people out there for the simple reason that they outnumber the good. So if you are good be prepared to either capitulate or stand your ground. I was not trained to capitulate with grace, and I have too much to lose therefore I stand my ground.
It seems to me that it is preposterous of us to judge the Israelis unless we have experienced what they have. What I see is an incredible group of people who empowered themselves with a collective will after being kicked around for a few millenia by just about everyone else. Then once they landed where they did, low and behold they found out that even there on a strip of arid sand all their neighbors not only outnumbered them, but hated them.
They too don't want to cease to be, so they defend themselves.
Posted by: Raimondo | Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 10:13 PM
Always a pleasure, Baroness.
Posted by: Rob | Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 06:04 PM
"BTW Israel is not a democracy and there are other democracies in the region; Israel practises apartheid like the old South Africa, but in any case being a democracy doesn't give any country the right to use force."
I'm afraid Mr. Byron is just plain mistaken. Isreal is having elections for a parliamentary system very much like Britain's, without the monarch on top. Isreali citizens are voting for their leadership, while surrounded by fuedal tribal tyrannies. The comparison to South Africa is not valid in the least. The "apartheid" you speak of is of the Arabs making. The are savage murderers who only want blood and genocide, and have chosen that path yet again.
Perhaps Mr. Byron should travel to the West Bank and live amongst his beloved "Palestinian victims" for a few years, if they would let an infidel go for a day with his head in place. You feel like submitting to the Prophet(pbuh)? Don't bring anything with you that might offend Islam, lest you be drawn and quartered by a frothing bloodthirsty mob of your precious "victims".
They would in all likelihood declare you a Zionist spy, despite all protests to the contrary, and summarily execute you. If you're a homosexual, Mr. Byron, that's a death penalty all on it's own. No trial, no counsel, for Allah orders it. Your precious "victims" would not concern themselves with your rights for one nanosecond. Not if a propaganda parade with the dead homo Zionist spy would prompt more seething rage for an afternoon. All for the cause right?
Posted by: brian | Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 04:05 PM
Mr. Byron:
I salute your willingness to end the name calling.
Posted by: Washington | Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 02:17 PM
Sigmund:
I will repeat again- "Not a moral reason? She is a democratic nation surrounded by tyrants that openly declare they want to see her destroyed, she the target of clerics that are obscene in their bigotry and celebrate the most evil and vile of actions and terror. Further, Israel remains the only democracy in the region. Is that what bothers you- she is a free nation that supports the US?"
This is another "two wrongs make a right" argument. But in addition the "wrong" faced by Israel happened after the wrong Israel inflicted and was a response to Israel's prior aggression. It is BECAUSE Israel resorted to violence that others come to defend the Palestinian victims.
BTW Israel is not a democracy and there are other democracies in the region; Israel practises apartheid like the old South Africa, but in any case being a democracy doesn't give any country the right to use force.
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Kenny:
I don't know how to evaluate your statements about Israeli's and Palestinians' rights to their own countries, because such language is inherently problematic, being in most cases shot through from beginning to end with the fallacy of hypostasization
Well I think our views are quite compatible. All I mean is the understanding of sovereignty as described in the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution, which builds the bridge between your view of rights only applying to individuals with the previous ideas that sovereignty was an aspect purely of a nation state.
Sovereignty derives from the individuals' right to be left the hell alone to get on with the pursuit of happiness. But it is expressed nationally for practical purposes. Therefore whereas many here have argued that the Palestinians had no right to be left the hell alone by the Israelis because Palestine was not a proper nation state, I have argued that because sovereignty is based on individual rights, the Palestinians had the same collective rights regardless of whether they were a nation or a province or just a well defined group of people.
At the same time though it is necessary to say these were collective not individual rights because the issue was one which was collective in nature (security). There was no problem with indivdual jews immigrating to the Holy land.
you have no truck with the idea that what happened in the ancient past can affect who has the current right to have a country. Yet what happened in 1967 is now forty years in the past
Again my concept is close to yours. In the end it's perhaps an arbitrary (though necessary) dividing line but I chose to answer this question by refering back to the rights of the individual again. There are people alive still who were thrown off their land by the Israelis. While that remains true and while the issue remains fresh I think it has to be classified as recent rather than ancient history.
groups or nations may be said to have "rights" only anthropomorphically, as a shorthand description of the net effect of the application of individual rights and responsibilities and actions
I more or less agree but when individuals take on cooperative issues such as defence or the use of the commons the individual "right" involved sounds fairly abstract --- the right to not be thrown off my land is concrete but the right to not have most of my neighbours thrown off their land is also an issue. Would you say it is an individual right or a collective right? perhaps the difference is just semantics.
Posted by: DavidByron | Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 01:42 PM
Hey Kenny welcome home, we've missed you!
Rob, if I haven't said it already it's always good to see you!
Thanks David, I read about it already, and in fact Siggy has a long post on it "Progressive" love.....
Posted by: Alexandra | Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 01:14 PM
David,
Dropping by once again...I realize you may not be interested in replying since I confess I haven't checked up on where the conversation on human sacrifice went. I can only say that (a) my daughter has gone without an epileptic seizure for a week now and I'm starting to breathe more easily and (b) therefore I promise I'll check back in and read any answer you might give to this comment. But if you don't want to waste time on me I'll understand.
My problem is, I don't know how to evaluate your statements about Israeli's and Palestinians' rights to their own countries, because such language is inherently problematic, being in most cases shot through from beginning to end with the fallacy of hypostasization. I don't know the basic principles of your political philosophy, which means that not only do I not know what makes people have a right to their own country in your eyes, but I don't even know what you would mean if you were to say that certain people have a right to their own country. And it's hard to figure it out from what you've said because you seem to be wandering all over the map.
For example, you have no truck with the idea that what happened in the ancient past can affect who has the current right to have a country. Yet what happened in 1967 is now forty years in the past, and I venture to suggest that the majority of people now engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle -- on both sides -- were not active participants in that war; but you still seem (perhaps I misunderstand you) to believe that 1967 is determinative for current ethical evaluations. At what point will you consider that the Six-Day War is irrelevantly far into the past? And on what grounds will you make that determination? Why do you say nothing about the Great Arab Revolt and the violence of the summer of 1936? Is that far enough back to be irrelevant? Why nothing about the 1948 War and Secretary-General Pasha's statement that, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre"?
As I say, it is hard to extract from your statements to date a coherent guiding set of political principles. If you wouldn't mind stating them explicitly I'd be genuinely interested in hearing them.
My own strongly-held core views can be expressed as:
1. There is only one fundamental human right, and that is the right not to be subjected to violence and fraud unless you started it. All other "rights" (including political rights such as rights of citizenship, the right to vote, etc.) are details of implementation, and their validity and importance are determined on a case-by-case basis and entirely by the degree to which they contribute to the safeguarding, for every human being, of the aforesaid one true fundamental human right.
2. All moral rights, responsibilities, actions, torts, and privileges exist in reality only at the individual level (because only individuals actually exist in concrete reality), and groups or nations may be said to have "rights" only anthropomorphically, as a shorthand description of the net effect of the application of individual rights and responsibilities and actions, etc. Therefore any appeal to the "rights" of groups or nations must be strictly scrutinized for the fallacy of hypostasization, by checking to make sure they can be coherently restated in terms of the individuals involved.
I do not, however, expect you to discard your own political philosophy and adopt mine. I only want to understand yours, which I find impossible to bring into focus based on your comments so far. I mention mine only because it would be rude to ask for yours without being willing to reciprocate; it is your ideas, not mine, that I find interesting. (I already know my own views, you see, and would learn nothing from their recapitulation.)
Respectfully yours.
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 12:17 PM