UN's Global Mission: Reviving, Spreading And Fueling Rabid Anti-Semitism
As we hold our breath, watching Israel's struggle for security and peace, we also witness, yet again, how she is held to a much more onerous standard than the rest of the world; the classic definition of anti-Semitism: one standard for everyone else, and then an impossible one for the Jews.
And the UN is leading the charge as the usual suspects apply the same old double standards when it comes to judging what statements or attitudes constitute 'anti-Semitism' in comparison to, say, 'racism' against African-Americans. Imagine the outcry, if during an official UN "anti-racism" summit the 'Lawyer's Union of the Southern States' would distribute flyers with a picture of the Confederate Battle flag and the inscription, "What if we had won? The good thing—there would be no Civil Rights Act of 1871 and no Monroe v. Pape." Now, what do you think Al Sharpton would do....
You ask, who is the 'Lawyer's Union of the Southern States'? Pure invention of mine and solely to put the terribly biased conduct of the UN into context: The 'Arab Lawyer’s Union', freely distributed at the UN's "anti-racism" summit in Durban, South Africa, just before 9/11 flyers with a picture of Hitler and the words, "What if I had won? The good thing—there would be no Israel"; they freely distributed books containing cartoons of swastika-festooned Israelis and fanged, hooked-nosed Jews, blood dripping from their hands.
How could that have been allowed to take place and why did the conference’s secretary-general, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson ignore demands to remove this anti-Semitic literature.
How come that we are now being force-fed the same one-sided reporting and UN rhetoric, much like UN’s response to Israeli military incursion into the West Bank town of Jenin in April 2002?
The conclusion, "the UN has fashioned itself into perhaps the foremost global platform for anti-Semitism", to use Anne Bayefsky's words from her damning essay, 'The UN and the Jews'.
This indifference to anti-Semitism has been mirrored by the UN’s growing refusal over the decades to support the principle of self-determination for the Jewish people—that is, Zionism. The irony, of course, is that the UN General Assembly was very much present at the creation of the state of Israel, having endorsed the postwar partition plan for British-ruled Palestine. But much has changed since 1948.
In general, and in the abstract, the UN has remained committed to the ideal of self-governing nation-states. As one characteristic declaration of the General Assembly puts it, "All peoples have a right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development." Indeed, over the years, the UN has developed and extended the principles of self-determination, which are now taken to entail not just the basic right of political independence but guarantees of non-interference by other nations, a realm of domestic jurisdiction and national sovereignty, and the preservation of historical, cultural, and religious particularities.
Where the UN has fallen markedly short is in the application of these principles, and in no case more strikingly than that of Israel. The key factor has been the changing composition of the international body. From the late 1940’s to the mid-60’s, the original membership more than doubled. Of the 67 new states joining in this period, 80 percent attached themselves to the Group of 77—the UN’s third-world caucus, made up of many former European colonies—and some 40 percent had Muslim majorities. By 1977, the five members of the Arab League who helped to found the UN had been joined by all sixteen others.
To this radicalized and often Soviet-influenced contingent, self-determination was invoked in UN circles not as a general principle but as a tool to wield against the West, especially the U.S. and its increasingly stalwart ally, Israel. Self-determination was a right of the oppressed, to be exerted against oppressors. In the prosecution of this cause, the weight assigned to historical claims was itself selective and discriminatory: those who rejected the UN's 1947 partition plan for Palestine were labeled the oppressed, while Jewish victims, from Palestine to Europe, were characterized as the oppressors.
By this means has the UN negotiated the passage from omission to commission. Not only has it consistently failed to appreciate or even to acknowledge the state of Israel’s preservation of Jewish independence and identity, it has become the loudest and most determined foe of the Zionist project.
In 1975 the UN General Assembly passed its notorious resolution explicitly equating Zionism with racism. Ever since then, and notwithstanding the formal repeal of the resolution in 1991, the repellent imagery of Israelis as racists has been a staple of UN rhetoric. Today, diplomats from Arab and Muslim states—states that effectively rendered themselves Judenrein in the late 1940’s—refer to Israel’s new security fence against terrorism as an "apartheid wall." Palestinian towns and villages are called "Bantustans." And the Palestinian Marwan Barghouti, on trial in Israel for acts of terrorism, is labeled another Nelson Mandela.
As the current events in Lebanon fuel this rampant double standard and pernicious bias, and as anti-Semitism is spreading again with renewed vigor like a metastasizing cancer, the conflict also revives the charge that all who criticize Israel's action are immediately disqualified as 'anti-Semitics'.
I ask, how are we to distinguish between those who hate Israel because it is a Jewish state and those who criticize Israel for her actions but feel no animosity or hatred towards the Jewish people?
Apart from most of the Muslim world, whose sympathies and outright adoration for the many genocidal leaders in the Middle East needs no further proof or debate, how are we to flush out the shrewd anti-Semites who pose as bona fide critics of Israel's actions?
UPDATE: David Kopel @ Volokh makes a strong case that the UN is an accomplice in the Hezbollah kidnapping.
Hey Ken,
Thanks!! I gotcha.
Btw: Some of you funny guys ought to get together and give us a sort of Saturday Night Live for thinking Folks at ATB.
You all generate some funny, funny dialogue :)
Posted by: jess1dering | Tuesday, July 25, 2006 at 11:12 PM
Jess,
You're basically right that the figure of speech itself -- that is, talking about groups of people as if they were individuals -- is not necessarily fallacious. The fallacy only happens when you build an argument that would work if you were talking about individuals, but doesn't work if you're talking about groups -- but then you plug in groups and act like they're individuals. So when you see the figure of speech -- "we have to protect the American worker with tariffs;" "society has a duty to help the poor;" "indigenous peoples have the right to political self-determination;" "this land belongs to the Palestinians/to the Jews" -- you always have to check the argument to make sure the argument will work even if restated in terms of individuals.
Here, let me go to a specific example. Saul's claim, at least as he originally stated it, is that the land of Israel rightfully belongs to the Jews, not to the Palestinians, because the Jews have been there longer; so it's rightfully "our" land. The Palestinians and their apologists like former ATB commentor David Bryon claim that Israel has no right to exist because the land of Palestine rightfully belongs to the Palestinians; so it's "our" land, again. But if we know about the fallacy of hypostasization, we instantly recognize that "the Jews" and "the Palestinians" are groups that are being treated here like individuals -- since groups don't exist, they cannot literally "own" anything any more than they can "believe" anything.
So we set out to translate both Saul's claim and Byron's into what they are saying about individuals. And it's instantly clear that they do not mean, "Each individual Jew/Palestinian owns the entire land of Israel/Palestine." So that's a major red flag right there: they're talking about "owning" or "possessing" land but they can't possible mean by "own" or "possess" what it means in ordinary English. What, then, do they mean?
The answer is...well, it's not at all clear what exactly they mean; and when you try to pin them down, as I once vainly tried to pin Byron down, you do not usually have any luck at all. So I will try to assign some sort of meaning to the argument, and it probably won't be a meaning they would agree to; and Saul is welcome to provide his own translation. But just for the sake of illustrating how you go about trying to make sense of a hypostatic argument, imagine the following dialog with a hypothetical Palestinian nationalist (a real Palestinian probably wouldn't make the same answers I imagine up for my hypothetical one):
--
Me: Okay, you don't mean that each individual Palestinian owns the entire land of Palestine. So when you say that Palestine "belongs to the Palestinian people," what are you actually saying.
Palestinian: I'm saying that the land of Palestine ought to be governed by Palestinians.
Me: But the land of Palestine is also not a person and therefore can't have any obligations; it's meaningless to talk as though the land of Palestine itself "ought" to do anything. Only people can have obligations. Aren't you saying that some unspecified bunch of people owe it to the Palestinians to let Palestinians govern the land of Palestine?
Palestinian: Okay, fine, sure.
Me: Which people? Which people owe it to Palestinians to let Palestinians govern the land?
Palestinian: Everybody in the world.
Me: Including the Israelis who were born and raised in Israel?
Palestinian: Yes.
Me: Why would they have that obligation?
Palestinian: Because we've lived there longer.
Me: Excuse me, but that's hypostasization itself. How old are you?
Palestinian: Twenty-three.
Me: Doesn't that mean that a whole bunch of Israelis have actually lived in the Holy Land a lot longer than you have? So if "living there a long time" gives you the right to govern a country, doesn't that mean they have more of a right to run the country than you have?
Palestinian: No, but my people have lived there for hundreds of years.
Me: I think I am safe in saying that there has never in all of history been a Palestinian Arab who lived anyhere at all for hundreds of years. But tell me something. Isn't the right to govern a country, the right to hurt people if they don't do what you want?
Palestinian: Okay.
Me: Why would any individual owe it to anybody else to let the other person hurt him?
Palestinian: [silence]
Me: Hang on a second before we go any further: would you also say that Palestinians owe it to Palestinians to let Palestinians govern the land of Palestine?
Palestinian: That's stupid; of course all Palestinians want Palestinians to govern our land.
Me: Hm. But it's not going to be some generic "Palestinians" who govern Palestine; it will be a specific bunch of Palestinian individuals, right?
Palestinian: Okay.
Me: Do you think all Palestinians want to be governed by Hamas?
Palestinian: [silence]
Me: Do you think Hamas wants to be governed by anybody else? How willing has Hezbollah been to be governed by other Lebanese?
Palestinian: [silence]
Me: Maybe we should change the subject a little bit. Um...okay, look, why would anybody want to be governed, anyway? Why would a Palestinian say, "I want other Palestinians to have the right to shoot people"?
Palestinian: To protect us.
Me: From whom?
Palestinian: From our enemies.
Me: You must mean "to protect Palestinian individuals from the people who want to hurt them," right?
Palestinian: Right, exactly.
Me: Where, right now, is a Palestinian who doesn't like Jews but also doesn't want to have to take orders from religious fundamentalists, least likely to be shot or beaten up for his political views? In Israel, where Jews are responsible for protecting him, or in Gaza, where Palestinians are?
Palestinian: [long pause] Look, it doesn't matter, it's Our Land.
---
Do you see what I'm getting at? Do you see how, if you take the claim that "Americans have a right to govern America," you can go straight to an individualistic form of the statement with no problem at all because the American structure of government is founded upon the individual; but that if you try to take a "this land is Our Land" formulation of the Israel/Palestine conflict and remove the hypostasization, you just find yourself going around in circles of ambiguity? When you say of America, "This land belongs to the American people," you are using the figure of speech of hypostasization, but because what you're saying still makes perfect sense when you rephrase it in terms of individual rights and obligations and costs and benefits, the argument is not a hypostatic argument. But suppose you say of Israel/Palestine, "This land belongs to the Jewish/Palestinian people," and you base your argument on some racial, ancestral claim. Then when you try to rephrase in terms of individual rights and obligations and costs and benefits, the whole thing falls apart like a house of cards built in a hall of mirrors: the argument doesn't survive the migration from the figurative world of The (nonexistent) Group to the real world of concrete and genuinely real individuals. Which means the argument depends on the hypostasization. And any argument that depends on hypostasization for its persuasiveness, is a fundamentally bad argument.
Finally, Jess, let me explain just a bit more what I mean by saying that the Israelis have some quite decent, non-hypostasizing arguments for their side, while the Palestinians have none (and therefore that as a tactical matter the Israelis should emphatically reject the fallacy). Remember my defense of the American people's right to govern America, as expressed in individualistic terms?
Let's take two competing hypostasized propositions and see how well they survive this kind of translation. First, the Jewish proposition, "The Jewish people have the right to govern the land of Israel."
Second, the Palestinian proposition, "The Palestinian people have the right to govern the land of Israel."
See what I mean? If you're the Israelis, and you have that kind of superiority when it comes to valid arguments, why would you legitimize the only argument the Palestinians have by using fallaciously hypostasizing arguments yourself? It doesn't matter how long "the Jews" or "the Palestinians" have lived there. To engage them on that field is to grant them the only possible field of propagandistic battle on which they have a prayer of competing, and on which you cannot realistically hope to persuade anybody who isn't already on your side to begin with. It's just tactically very foolish.
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Tuesday, July 25, 2006 at 10:15 AM
Ken, yes, yes but still I don't see the danger alert to Saul in regard to "H" and Israel's legitimacy as a nation? Or , rather, in using it to defend Israels legitimacy as a nation.
If I understand you correctly ,
"H" isn't universally fallacious. Is it?
Posted by: jess1dering | Monday, July 24, 2006 at 07:34 PM
Answers to the quiz in the last comment:
1. "A person should be judged not on the color of his or her skin, but on the content of her character."
Answer: not hypostasizatoin. This is a generally, albeit not universally, true statement. (For a discussion of situations in which it is not immoral to "judge a man by the color of his skin," so to speak, see the post I linked to in the previous comment.) Certainly not an example of hypostasization.
2. "It's not fair that black people have a harder time in America than white people."
Answer: not hypostasization. If you want to make a case that this statement is prone to the fallacy of overgeneralization, you could do so; but it isn't hypostasization.
3. "Racism is hating somebody else because of his ethnicity."
Answer: Seems like a pretty good definition to me. I don't see much wrong with this one at all.
4. "Racism is the oppression of one race by another."
Answer: And there you go. The hypostasization just leaps out at you.
Note the uses to which this rhetorical gamesmanship lends itself, in this final example: you can declare that a particular society has a "system of racism" because one race doesn't "do as well" as others (meaning that the odds that things will be tough for any given individual are greater, ceteris paribus, if he belongs to that race than if you does to others). Then any person from the Oppressing Race who gives even the smallest degree of assent to or support for "the system" can be accused of "participating in systemic racism." But a person from the Oppressed Race is by definition the victimized -- he can't be a party to racism because his own race doesn't have the power necessary to opress anybody else -- and therefore he is by definition not racist, no matter how much he hates people from other races. Oh, wait, that's not quite right. One of the Oppressed can be a racist, in one situation: if he "sells out" and "joins the racist system," then he is participating in racism against his own People and is therefore not just a racist, but a filthy quisling racist.
And all of this is made rhetorically persuasive, because racism is presented as something that entire races "do" and "suffer," not something that is essentially (as all human actions are) a matter of individual human choices and experiences.
And if you don't think the hypostasizing definition isn't wielded in America -- and wielded for this very purpose -- then you haven't been paying very close attention to the Farrakhan fringe.
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Monday, July 24, 2006 at 06:51 PM
Jess,
The key to understanding when the fallacy is happening and when it isn't, is simply this:
Take the shorthand form "Group X does Y," and try to expand it into a series of statements about what the individuals in the group do. If your argument still holds up, then you have a sound argument, and you can use "Group X does Y," as a convenient shorthand for expressing it. But if your argument falls apart as soon as you try to express it in terms of the individuals, then you have the fallacy of hypostasization.
For example, if you want to say, "Cannibals eat their enemies," this a simple and valid generalization. What you mean is, clearly, "Individual cannibals divvy up and chow down on individuals whom they capture." Which is clearly true.
Again, let's say that we have adopted a mechanism of government by which we settle differences of opinion by letting lots of individuals cast votes, and then you count the votes, and we all agree to abide by the thing the majority vote for. When the election has taken place, we can then, if we want to, say, "The People have spoken." Since that's just verbal shorthand for the democratic process, we can say that and not be saying anything stupid -- even though "the People," collectively, does not exist and can't literally say or think anything. You still, though, don’t want to get into the habit of talking about “the American People” without remembering that you really mean “most of the American individuals who care enough to vote.”
But now, let's imagine that we have a thousand people who identify themselves as being part of "the Left," and we are curious about what "the Left" thinks about exposing classified information. Let's say that if we went to see what the individuals thought, we would get the following breakdown:
1. 400 are angry about the Plame affair, and also about the SWIFT affair, because they believe passionately that classified information should be protected.
2. 400 fully back the New York Times in its publication of the SWIFT information, and they also don't think the Plame thing is a big deal, because they strongly value the public's right to know.
3. The remaining 200 manage to think simultaneously that the public had a right to know the SWIFT information and also that Bu$Hitler should be impeached over Plamegate.
Now, what does "the Left" think about Plamegate? Strictly speaking, it doesn't think anything because it doesn't exist – non est, ergo non cogitat. But if we define "what the Left thinks" to mean "what the majority of individuals on the Left think," then in our example it is meaningful to say that "the Left is angry about Plamegate," since 600 are and only 400 aren't. And what does "the Left" think about SWIFT? In our example it is meaningful to say that "the Left doesn't think the SWIFT exposure is a big deal," since 600 don't and only 400 do.
So, let's say that we have grown carelessly accustomed to the habit of talking about "the Left" as though it were a single collective individual that had opinons and motivations and such. It would be the most natural thing in the world to put the previous two conclusions together and say, "The Left is angry about Plamegate, but it doesn't think the SWIFT exposure is a big deal." Now, if we could say that about a single individual, then we could freely say that on the question of classified information his position was logically incoherent, and thus either he was a moron or a fool. Indeed, when it comes to the 200 individuals on the Left who do in fact combine those two positions: morons, or liars, or both. But even though in our example it is true to say that the Left is angry about Plamegate, and it is also true to say that the Left doesn't think the SWIFT exposure is a big deal, it is FALSE to say, "The Left is angry about Plamegate, but it doesn't think the SWIFT exposure is a big deal." Only a small minority of people on the Left hold that asinine compound position. Yet "The Left is angry about Plamegate, but it doesn't think the SWIFT exposure is a big deal" -- along with its inevitable blog corollary, "So the Left is stupid" -- sounds reasonable as long as you keep talking as if it were a single person.
What you would actually have to say -- assuming you want "the Left thinks..." to mean "the majority of individuals on the Left think..." -- is this: "The Left either is mad about both, or else it isn't mad about either." And as soon as you say that, somebody is bound to say, "Well, which is it?"
Do you see? The one that's accurate ("The Left either is mad about both, or else it isn't mad about either"), sounds stupid. The one that seems to make sense ("The Left is angry about Plamegate, but it doesn't think the SWIFT exposure is a big deal"), is actually a false slander on the majority of the Left. And that's why you have to be so careful when you start talking about groups like they were people.
So if you want to be reasonable, you practice the intellectual discipline of watching out for the fallacy of hypostasization. Thus when you hear yourself reach the conclusion, "The Left is stupid," you automatically say, "Except the Left doesn't actually exist; so it can't be stupid; so what am I really saying?" When you do that, you find yourself forced to rephrase your statement as, "More people on the Left than not are upset about Plamegate, and more people on the Left than not think the SWIFT revelations were okay; so there are more people on the Left who have both those reactions than there are people who disagree with either one or the other...oh, wait a minute, that's actually not very likely."
In short, when you restate your argument in terms of individuals, you suddenly realize it's a dumb argument. And that means that you have been committing the fallacy of hypostasization.
For this reason, political party platforms tend to put on display a combination of beliefs that relatively few people in the party actually believe all at once. It is, I think, very important to remember that when you set out to show how stupid “the Left” or “the Right” is (meaning, people on the Left or right generally speaking), you can’t do it by showing that “what the Left believes” or “what the Right believes” is self-contradictory – because usually only a small minority of the Left believes “what the Left believes,” etc. That’s why when you settle everything by majority vote, only a minority of people wind up getting what they want – the will of the majority of individuals is consistently frustrated when all decisions are made by majority vote. Does that make sense?
I think what may be confusing you is that in your examples, you're pointing at fallacies, just not always the particular fallacy of hypostasization. Let me separate your examples into two classes:
1. Statements like "Italians are overly emotional," are generalizations. On that one you don't have to worry about hypostasization because you are not talking about them as if they were a single thing -- if you were to say, "The Italian race overdramatizes everything," then you would have to start watching out for hypostasization. But as long as you could turn, "The Italian race overdramatizes everything" back into, "Italians are overly emotional" without changing its meaning, you're not hypostasizing fallacoiusly.
You might very well be overgeneralizing, and if you insist on believing that some particular Italian is overly emotional even though the people who know him all agree that he is notably phlegmatic, then you certainly are. But that's a little bit different thing, and I’m not going to cover that ground again, having already done so at some length here.
2. 2. What you are doing with your discussion of how the American political process works, is precisely the correct thing to do when you suspect hypostasization: you're restating the process in terms of individuals, and (in the American case) in terms of the general agreement to cooperate under a shared set of rules that allows us to disagree, and yet take communal action, without having a civil war every time we turn around.
I told Saul that I would try to explain why "the American people" can be said to have a right to our land; and I think the best thing is to compare the path that you are taking -- individuals choosing to cooperate -- with the path La Raza takes: the continent rightly belongs to The Race, and it was stolen by The White Race, but it still belongs to The Race. The latter is a hypostasizing approach; if ownership cannot cohere in a hypostatic group, the claims of the indigenous-people mestizo outfits collapse. But we can say something like this:
Start with the Declaration of Independence:
Note first that the rights for the protection of which governments are legitimately founded, inhere in individuals; the Founders have that part absolutely correct. Note also that even though the Founders talk about "the People," they do so in the plural -- that is, they continue to think of "the People" as a bunch of individuals acting in concert. And the whole process that culminated in the ratification of the Constitution, involves their attempt to come up with a set of processes to ensure that common action could be taken in a way that both (a) ensured a reasonable amount of stability and predictability in government ("Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes..."), and (b) did in fact effectively protect the individual human rights on which everything else was based.
What "the American people" -- meaning by that, all citizens of the United States who continue firm in their commitment to cooperate with each other within the framework of the Constitution -- what "the American people" can say to anyone who wishes to abolish our present government and replace it with a new one, is simply this: "Americans like us have been running this country by these rules for two centuries now and have a long track record of success on both counts -- not unbroken success, mind you, but much better than just about any other government can point to. What justification can you show to make us believe that the new processes you propose, will do a better job than the one we have used for all these years has done? In particular, how can you argue that your new scheme will do a better job both of protecting and of respecting the rights of the individuals within our borders? And if you can't give us that sort of justification, then why should we stop cooperating with each other and start cooperating with you?"
Can you imagine La Raza trying to justify its takeover of American territory on the grounds that the track record shows that "indigenous" (which is to say, mestizo) Mexicans do a better job of running effective and corruption-free government than do "Europeans," i.e., people whose great-great-great-grandparents and all generations since have been born and raised in America? Can you imagine the indigenists trying to justify their political program of "for The Race, everything; for those outside The Race, nothing," on the grounds that a group with such a slogan is the set of people most likely to respect and protect the rights of all individuals equally?
In other words, the case for the legitmacy of the American government can be built up from its clear track record of utility in the defense of individual human rights, and if we want to talk about "the American people have a right to run their own country" we're welcome to do so, as long as we mean, "There's nothing wrong with Americans' defense of the processes by which the millions of honest and well-meaning individual Americans cooperate with other in the mutual defense of and respect for each others' individual rights." But you can't restate the indigenists' claims in terms of individual human rights and still salvage any credibility for it at all. And that means that the indigenists' claim is an illusion, a mirage created by the rhetoric of hypostasization.
Now, if you want to try your hand at another example, compare several different formulations from American politics having to do with race and racism, and see if you can tell which one(s) involves the fallacy of hypostasization and why:
1. "A person should be judged not on the color of his or her skin, but on the content of her character."
2. "It's not fair that black people have a harder time in America than white people."
3. "Racism is hating somebody else because of his ethnicity."
4. "Racism is the oppression of one race by another."
(Answers to follow in next comment.)
I apologize for not being able to express this more clearly; I know it's difficult stuff.
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Monday, July 24, 2006 at 06:35 PM
"the Americans" do not exist as a single concrete agent capable of thought, emotion, motivation or action"
................................................
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"the Americans" not so much, but "Radical Islamists? Woah, Nelly!
"the Americans" hardly, but the KKK? Yikes !!
"the Americans" sorta , the American Red Cross ? More so.
Ken,
I think I understand the reason for calling hypostasization ( I'll refer to it as "H" from now on) a fallacy in relationship to naturally occuring groups of peoples , such as whites, blacks,
europeans , etc.. One senses that there is something inherently wrong with statements like , "Italians are overly emotional" , "Germans are cruel", " the Irish are drunkards". " Women can't drive." Even if
a characteristic is ( or was, as in the case of "white" slave owners )noticable within a certain group, still, there are countless numbers within so large a group absent the characteristic.
In these groups , the first thing I notice is the lack of group consensus in regard to any given characteristic. In the Irish example, we have no common decision such as, " give me alcoholism or give me death" . If we did, then perhaps all Irish would be drunks. Also, in the case of slave trade, most "whites" didn't agree that all whites should be slave owners. It was a small group (relatively speaking) motivated by the same brand of greed that has people hiring illegals to this very day.
However, when you get into groups that have coalesced (eg. cannibals. To say cannibals eat other human beings is not the same as saying Irish are drunkards) , don't you think the arguement weakens? Doesn't it weaken even further when groups coalesce based on a common purpose, on a common will?
When "group-will" decides to form government , agrees on a system with which the government is to make rules and agrees to abide by those rules , we have a consensus, don't we?. Our nation is particularly divided these days YET the struggle taking place between both sides of the divide takes place within an agreed upon system. That system is American consensus at it's most basic level. I don't see how it can be said that this "group" , albeit through group-conscience/consensus, is incapable of thought, emotion, motivation and action ( from now and henceforth forevermore referred to as TEMA ). After all, the individual can and does deposit TEMA into the group in many ways shapes and forms; in effect, the individual ,and the many individuals, breathe life into the group or, if you will, creates a sort of "H".
As commonality of purpose within a group intensifies the group becomes more and more capable of transmitting TEMA to individuals and individuals to transmit TEMA back to the group. I suppose that makes the group , for better or worse, a much stronger entity.
Some groups , as you seem to suggest, are morally more "valid" than others, based upon the legitimacy of methods used to form a consesus eg. terroristic threats and manipulation as opposed to respect for freedom under the law.
ANYWAY..
The victors in the last Great War, ( no one would argue that the war was anything but legitimate), divided "conquered" territory and distributed it as they saw fit. Todays Israel was the beneficiary of some of that conquered land. They formed a government in a fair and just manner. They formed a nation and they breathed, breathe and will breathe life into that nation and that life is a good one; productive, law-abiding, non-oppressive, tolerant..........
Before I go one iota further , I humbly ask you, what is it that I am missing and or misunderstanding ?
I count on you for honesty.
Posted by: jess1dering | Monday, July 24, 2006 at 01:02 PM
Just a quick hint: check the Declaration of Independence for a succinct statement of the purpose for which governments are justly instituted among people.
Posted by: Kenny | Friday, July 21, 2006 at 02:35 PM
Now, Saul, the next thing I should do is set about showing that -- without hypostasizing -- it is possible to establish rights roughly analogous to what you describe as the Americans' right to the USA, etc.," but that will have to wait until tonight.
Posted by: Kenny | Friday, July 21, 2006 at 02:34 PM
Okay, here’s how hypostasization plays into group claims of group rights, group grievances, etc.
Let’s start with a very obvious example: it is true that “white Americans” behaved despicably to black Africans and their American progeny. That is, for a long time “white America” held “black America” in slavery. And we hear a great deal today about “the consequences of slavery” and how “the black race” is still “suffering the effects of slavery.” All of this is constructed in linguistic terms that are modeled upon individual behavior, so that a person defending this view (say, in defense of the idea that “white America” should pay reparations to “black America”) will talk along these lines:
“White America enslaved black Africans and exploited their labor. When you’ve done something evil to somebody and profited at their expense, you should be forced to pay them back. So white America should pay reparations to black America.”
But if you understand the fallacy of hypostasization, the first thing you do is demand that this argument be restated in terms of the individuals involved rather than the abstractions. And that makes it look like this:
“White American individuals who lived more than a century and a half ago enslaved lots of individual black Africans and exploited their labor. When you’ve done something evil to somebody and profited at their expense, you should be forced to pay them back. So today’s white Americans, who had nothing to do with slavery in any way, shape or form, should be forced to pay reparations to today’s black Americans, who were never slaves.”
This is so patently absurd that the defenders of the whole “legacy of slavery” concept fall back on saying, “Well, yes, but today’s black Americans are still worse off because of slavery and today’s white Americans are still better off, and that’s not fair; so it should be fixed.”
But wait a second. Who is it, in modern America, who has really profited from slavery? Who is most unquestionably better off because America was once a nation that allowed slavery? Let me give you a hint: a black American who claims to have been harmed by slavery, is a black person who would not exist at all if his ancestors had not been subjected to slavery. Any black American who is not ready to say, “I wish I’d never been born” – any black American who is happy to be alive and doesn’t want to die – is somebody who owes to American slavery literally everything he has. And that holds true even for children of the ghetto – much less for people like Spike Lee, who has courtside seats for the Knicks thanks to a long string of movies exploring how “we” (by which he means “black people who did not grow up with upper-middle-class privileges the way I did”) have suffered.
You see, American slavery had a devastating economic effect on the following classes of individuals – I willingly rule out of court, by the way, the eternal benefits accruing to slaves who converted to Christianity and who would have gone to Hell if they hadn’t been kidnapped but now are in Heaven:
1. The slaves who were kidnapped out of Africa, and wound up with more miserable lives in American slavery than they would have had in African freedom. Considering what life was like for Africans at the time, some of the slaves may actually have in the long run wound up with better and much longer lives under benevolent masters; but we can all agree I think that most such slaves were much worse off. These people cannot now be recompensed, because they are all dead; but the injustice done to them instantly makes American slavery an inexusable disgrace to our American heritage.
2. The potential descendants who would have sprung from those slaves had they stayed in Africa and married there. These people cannot be recompensed because they do not exist; slavery deprived them of their existence (insofar as a potentiality can be said to have been deprived of anything) in the same way that it bestowed existence upon today’s black Americans.
3. White Americans who engaged in, or at least acquiesced in, the evils of slavery, and who were grievously harmed (as Socrates or Jesus or Paul or any half-decent Talmudic rabbi would have pointed out) by the damage done to their moral character.
4. Subsequent descendants of the black slaves who suffered at the hands of slave-owners...and now here we see the hypostasization again. It might appear that I am contradicting myself – those descendants would not have existed if it weren’t for slavery; so how can I call them victims of slavery? I’ll give you a couple of seconds to think about what could be wrong...have you figured it out yet? Here’s a clue: it has to do with the term “slavery”...exactly, that’s right, “slavery” is itself an abstraction standing in for “all of the myriad individual acts of violence that sprang from the American tolerance of slavery.” Thus the black slaves born in America were beneficiaries of the specific acts of slavery that had been committed against their parents – but they were then subjected to a never-ended string of new violations of their rights. And the fact that they had benefitted from their parents’ suffering, did not justify the later, and different, series of violent acts aimed at their own persons. “Slavery” is no more a single act than “the black race” is a single person. Thus the black slaves born into slavery did indeed suffer great wrongs from slavery, and had a moral claim against the individuals who wronged them, even though the net effect of “slavery” as a whole was net positive (assuming they would not rather never have been born at all). But at any rate, those people are all dead, too, and no restitution can be made to them now.
5. Every American soldier killed or maimed in the Civil War, plus those who loved them. All those people are dead now, too.
6. Ultimately every American who lived in America during slavery, and arguably any of us who followed and who would have existed at all and therefore would have been in a position to benefit from slavery’s absence, have been deprived of the many good things that might have come out of America during all those centuries of slavery but did not because of the moral and economic and political damage that the institution of slavery did. But here’s the thing about people: when put into a bad situation, a lot of people choose to make the best of it. So good people (and this is, from my Christian perspective, one of the ways in which people are in the image of God and do His work on earth) set about bring good out of evil. That good is not the same good that could have arisen in the absence of the evil, and it is probably inferior to the specific good that was destroyed by the evil. But it is still good. And the longer slavery recedes into the past, the more the past is overwhelmed by all the actions that have been taken in the meantime, both for good and for ill. At this point, there are probably very few Americans left who would exist today had slavery not existed. It did great evil to a great many people – but the people whom it harmed are dead, and the vast majority of us alive today -- including black people -- are beneficiaries of those evil acts. This does not make us evil; instead it is a tribute to God’s ability to redeem our mistakes, and to humanity’s ability to keep making the best of a bad situation.
It is, of course, beyond question that black people in general still have it harder than white people in America. But it is absurd to continue to say that the discrepancy is the fault of slavery. To take merely a single obvious example, there is not a particularly high correlation between having slaves as remote ancestors and being a violent criminal or a drug addict. There is, however, a very significant correlation between having unmarried parents as your immediate ancestors, and being a violent criminal or a drug addict. But the black family was not destroyed by slavery; in the first half of this century most black children were legitimate. The inner-city black family’s disintegration came in the wake of the War on Poverty, when the government began subsidizing illegitimacy. If you are going to blame the wretched state of those individual black children who are wretched on a government policy, that state can be laid much more rationally at the door of Lyndon Johnson than at the door of any real-life Simon Legree. And yet if the welfare insanity that continues to batter the inner-city black family were done away with, then years from now you would have a generation of black children who, as individuals, were beneficiaries of the War on Poverty, because they would be kids who would never have been born had not their grandmothers born illegitimate children paid for with welfare checks, but they themselves would have grown up in a stable black family and thus escaped the evils of growing up with the government "helping" them.
People bring good out of evil. And therefore as time passes after an evil act, its consequences become more and more mixed, and the people to whom that evil act has brought net harm grow ever fewer and fewer. If the evil is to continue to harm people, it must be refreshed and revitalized by newly evil acts – but that is just to say that the harm that is attributed to ancient evils, is really the result of fresher, more recent evil actions.
By collapsing thousands or even millions of individuals into a group, hypostasization creates the illusion that what is done to one is done to all; by collapsing thousand or millions of actions into a single monolithic “slavery” or “colonialist imperialism” or (even more outrageously from the logical standpoint) “racism,” hypostasization creates the illusion that acts of evil done in the past are still carrying all the power and force and destruction of evil acts done yesterday – precisely because the force of yesterday’s evil acts are attributed to the actions of long-dead centuries. Most of all, by taking an all but incomprehensibly complex process involving hundreds of years and millions of people and billions of actions, and treating it as a single act done by a single group to another single group, the rationalizer of grievance hides from his own eyes as well as from others the benefits (however mixed) that have accrued to the “victims” from the very evil acts of which they complain. For, you see, a man who wants only an excuse to hate and to avenge, will do practically anything to avoid hearing himself admit, whether like a sullen child or with all the graciousness of Joseph, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”
Your assignment now, class, is to apply this lesson to the case of the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Posted by: Kenny | Friday, July 21, 2006 at 02:32 PM
Saul,
As a quick primer, just dug up a description of the fallacy of hypostasization that I wrote probably fifteen years ago. Since then I've come to feel that by far the most destructive use of the fallacy is in the reification of "races" or "peoples," because it allows one (a) to claim somebody else's grievances as my own grievance because it is "our" grievance -- a crime against "my people" and therefore against me, and then proceed (b) to blame an evil person's evil on somebody who had nothing to do with it on the grounds that "they" did it and the (actually innocent) person is one of "them."
So this should be updated, with new examples including (almost certainly) the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which is an absolute textbook example of the life-destroying -- indeed, genocidal -- potential of this fallacy. I keep meaning to do that, but I keep not finding time. At any rate, this old, short little piece will do to explain what the fallacy is, at least.
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This fallacy comes when we take an abstract noun (such as Nature or justice or the black race or the Chinese people) and treat it as though it were a concrete, active entity (i.e., as though it possessed a hypostasis, a Greek word which was of critical significance in the great Christological controversies of the fourth century).
The best examples I can think of for this are political. Take the trade war between Japan and the U.S. [remember I wrote this fifteen years ago]. A protectionist might say, "Well, it's only fair. If Japan's going to put trade restrictions on us, we ought to get back by putting trade restrictions on Japan." This argument derives its emotional force from the fallacy of hypostasization. For it treats Japan and the United States as single entities, when in fact they are terms of convenience which allow us to talk about groups of people without constantly having to say "the people of Japan" or "the government of the United States." If we analyze this argument and look at what actually happens, we get something like this: U. S. rice producers are more efficient than Japanese rice growers; that is to say, Japanese consumers, if given a choice, would buy U.S. rice rather than Japanese rice. Naturally this is not the sort of situation preferred by the Japanese rice growers. So, rather than clean up their act, they use political influence to force U.S. growers to be less efficient (i.e., to be unable to deliver rice at the cheap price that they could without tariffs). The result: Japanese consumers are unable to get the U.S. rice that they want and have to settle for Japanese rice. The Japanese consumer and American rice grower get shafted; the Japanese rice grower gets a break at the expense of the Japanese consumer and American rice grower.
Now the protectionist Congressman decides to fix this situation. “We'll” put tariffs on “them.” But here's the problem: American rice growers are already in control of the American market. American consumers already buy American rice, so a tariff on rice won't help. The Congressman, then, turns to the auto industry. Now here is an industry where American consumers want to buy Japanese cars rather than American. So the Congressman puts a tariff on Japanese cars. The result: the American consumer can't get the cars he wants at the price he wants, and has to settle for an American car. The Japanese car industry gets hurt (so that the Japanese auto worker, who already is being forced to pay a high price for rice, is now put out of a job). The American consumer gets hurt (so that the American rice grower, who has already been shafted by the Japanese government and lost part of his revenue, now gets shafted by the American government, which is driving up his production costs -- since one presumes that the American rice grower needs an automobile or two). The American auto worker gets a subsidy, at the expense of the American car owner and Japanese auto worker.
If we now rephrase the protectionist argument without the benefit of the hypostasization, we get something like this: "The Japanese are hurting our rice growers with their tariffs. So we should make up for this by hurting our rice growers with tariffs on automobiles. That will make everything even again." Phrased this way, it is a silly argument. Even if we put it in the best possible light, we still get, "The Japanese government has chosen to hurt their rice eaters and our rice growers by a rice tariff benefiting their rice growers. We should retaliate by hurting their car makers and our car owners (including our rice growers) by a car tariff benefiting our car makers." And this is at best a much less convincing argument than the one that says, "If Japan puts tariffs on our goods, we ought to make up for it by putting tariffs on their goods."
Using simplified collective or abstract terms is a very convenient linguistic tool. It helps us express very complex issues in simplified form. But there is the constant danger of forgetting that the simplicity is purely verbal. When we start to treat the issues as though the actual issue were as simple as the language makes it sound, we wind up with the fallacy of hypostasization.
One other example. Take the nice, simple sentence, "The government should help the homeless." This sounds so simple and convenient. But it commits the fallacy of hypostasization in two ways. First of all, it treats the government as a moral entity, when in fact the government is not a moral agent. (That is to say, it falsely credits government with a hypostasis; it treats government as a hypostatic moral agent.) Government is a term for a collection of individual moral agents. It may be that when all these moral agents carry out their individual moral duties, the result will be government care of the homeless, in which case it would be a convenient verbal shortcut to say, "The government should help the homeless." But you cannot, merely by speaking of the government as if it were a single, hypostatic moral agent, leap from the fact that individuals have a responsibility to help the poor, to the proposition that they have a responsibility to do it through the mechanisms of government coercion.
Secondly, it makes the policy of government aid to the homeless sound like a simple and purely charitable, inoffensive prospect. "The government should help the homeless." Who wants to be opposed to aid to the homeless? What kind of callous monster wants to see little children starving in the street? But what you are actually saying is something like this: "The legislators should assign the bureaucrats to decide which people have money that ought to be taken away from them and given to the homeless; these bureaucrats should assign the IRS and police agencies to take that money away from the selected contributors, by force if necessary; the IRS should turn the money over to the bureaucrats in the State Comptroller's office; other bureaucrats should decide what homeless people qualify for money, and then they ought to take the money from the Comptroller and pass it out to deserving homeless people." Note that the whole process is much more complicated than the first version makes it sound; note also that the first version completely passes over the fact that the only way the government can do charitable acts for the homeless is by running around with guns taking money away from people who aren't homeless. If the Red Cross collected contributions at gunpoint, they'd be thrown into jail, which suggests that this issue of the government's right to practice charity via coercion is no simple issue -- yet from the short, hypostasizing version of the proposition, you wouldn't even know the issue existed.
Of course, if you are willing to say, "The legislators should assign the bureaucrats to decide which people have money that ought to be taken away from them and given to the homeless; these bureaucrats should assign the IRS and police agencies to take that money away from the selected contributors, by force if necessary; the IRS should turn the money over to the bureaucrats in the State Comptroller's office; other bureaucrats should decide what homeless people qualify for money, and then they ought to take the money from the Comptroller and pass it out to deserving homeless people” -- if you are willing to say that, then there is nothing wrong with saving a lot of time and energy by using, "The government should help the homeless," as a convenient shortcut. The fallacy of hypostasization arises only when, in using the short form, we forget that it's just an abbreviation for the long version, and thus fall into the belief that the whole issue is really as simple as the verbal shortcut makes it sound.
A different variation of hypostasization arises whenever we take phrases like "the typical American household," or, "the average American high school student," or, "the American worker." Such concepts are an amalgam of characteristics drawn from various individuals. But nowhere in America will you find a family with 2.4 children. Again, protectionism does not help "the American worker;" "the American worker" does not exist. Protectionism (at least in the short term) helps those American workers whose jobs are protected while hurting those American workers whose jobs are not protected and who (in their role as "the American consumer") have to pay higher prices for the stuff they need to buy.
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Does that help, Saul?
Posted by: Kenny | Friday, July 21, 2006 at 11:48 AM
Saul,
[grinning] I know; the fallacy of hypostasization is a very difficult one to grasp, and as a consequence is practically ubiquitous in most political and economic thought.
Basically, here's the deal: "the Americans," as such don't exist any more than there is anywhere on the continent an American family who has 2.3 children. "The Americans" never do anything, because "the Americans" do not exist as a single concrete agent capable of thought, emotion, motivation or action. "The American government" never does anything, because it does not exist. There are a whole bunch of individuals who have varying degrees of power and are willing to cooperate with (or backstab, as the case may be) each other to varying degrees; but in the end whenever we talk about how a group "does" something, it is a linguistic shorthand describing the net effect of a whole bunch of actions taken by a bunch of individuals.
I'll explain more later, using the Palestinian claim that Israel was "their" land as an example. But basically, you can talk about groups as if they behave like individuals, as long as you recognize that you're just conveniently collapsing into a single and efficient linguistic construct, the net effect of a whole bunch of individual actions. The trouble is that once you start using language that way, most people forget that it's a linguistic shortcut and they build arguments that could only be valid if the metaphor were actually straightforward, literal reality. It really is the political equivalent of dividing by zero; once you allow it, you can "prove" practically any political or economic proposition your own self-interest encourages you to "prove."
Thus the first test of any political doctrine that is expressed in terms of groups, is, "Can this doctrine be restated in terms of individual actions without falling apart into obvious absurdity?" If it can't, then you are in effect dividing by zero in order to arrive at the result you want; which is to say, if the doctrine is true then you have stumbled upon the truth by sheer blind luck, not by sound reasoning.
More later; I'm late for work.
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Friday, July 21, 2006 at 10:04 AM
Kenney: Thank you for your incisive comments; I also appreciate your defense of the Israeli right to exist, and live in piece in Israel; I will defer to you regarding your philosophical position -- I just do not understand it; using your theory of the "fallacy of hypostasization," would imply that either morally or by political or military fiat (GD's terms) the Americans have no right to the USA, the English have no rights to GB, the French have no right to France; the Saudis have no right to Suadi Arabia, the Egyptians to Egypt, etc.; I simply disagree; there are recognized moral rights to ones homeland; the facts that Muslims and those on the left, etc., may not recognize those rights, does not minimize the rights; it simply means that the rights have to be defended; the extent of the defense is dependent upon the strength and conviction of those defending versus those opposing those rights; the Islamist/Muslim pilosophy is that the entire world belongs to Islam and must be converted to Islam; Bin Laden to this day bemoans the loss of the caliphate to the Spanish; that does not mean that the Spanish do not possess a moral claim to Spain; while in the eyes of the Islamists they do not, in the eyes of the rest of the world they do.
Posted by: Saul Davis | Friday, July 21, 2006 at 12:44 AM
Saul,
I might be reading opinions into Ghost's oration, but I had the impression that he is saying that if you focus on the rights of, and wrongs done to, groups, then you never escape the violence. But it is very dangerous for me to talk as though I understand the Ghost.
So I will simply speak for myself and say (and the regulars are already clutching their hands to their heads and saying, “Oh, God, no, here we go again with Kenny and his bloody fallacy of hypostasization”) that a nation cannot, logically, possess anything, because a nation is an abstraction; and that the insistence on speaking as though nations have rights and ownership in any sense but that of legal fiction, is responsible for a very large percentage of the muddled political thought in the world and an even larger percentage of the world's violent and despicable blood feuds.
If you put an Arab in a room and a Jew in the room and have the two of them try to convince each other that Palestine is by right "ours" rather than "yours," they will go round and round in circles precisely as they would if one of them were arguing that 2 = 1 and the other was arguing that 2 = 3, both having "proved" their case by the expedient of dividing by zero.
The reason I strongly support Israel against the Arabs who would drive them into the sea, is that it's very easy to see that a nation run by Israelis shows vastly more respect for the rights of Arabs than any nation run by Arabs is likely to show for the rights of Jews -- indeed, Israel shows more respect for, and provides more protection of, the rights of Arabs than most nations run by Arabs do for the typical Arab citizen himself. Individuals have real rights, and governments' only legitimate justification is the reasonable expectation that the individuals' rights will be protected; and on this criterion the government of Israel has to use binoculars in order to make out its Arab neighbors in its rear-view mirror.
But once you legitimize the hypostasization of The Group, then you have taken a step that is both logically fallacious and empirically disastrous.
Which I think is the point the Ghost was making, but which I know is a point I will defend as crucial to any rational political philosophy.
Now, I pause here to say that I completely agree with you about the U.N.’s anti-Semitism and the hypocrisy of its babbling about “disproportionate” reactions. I am, I think, largely on your side. It’s precisely because of that, that I’m jumping on your idea about the “nation” having a “historical” right to the land: because it’s not just that your appeal to logically fallacious; it’s tactically foolish in the extreme for a supporter of Israel to use such an argument.
You see, the fundamental argument here is whether Israel has a right even to exist as a nation; and as long as a significant portion of the Arab world feels a jihadic imperative to push the Jews into the sea, Israel cannot hope for peace. The Arab claim that lies at the root of the problem is the claim that the Arab world has the right to engage in ethnic cleansing in “Palestine” (including what even the U.N. reluctantly recognizes as Israel) – and when you find an apologist for Hamas who disputes this claim, he informs you that the real root cause is Israel’s existence – that is, he restates the very claim in question.
But nobody in the Arab world, nor any of its David Byron / Juan Cole apologists in the West, can even begin to justify this extremist (but extraordinarily common) Arab claim without a fundamental appeal to the basic argument, “This land was Ours and They took it.” You are trying to argue back, “Oh, no, it wasn’t; it was Ours before it was Yours.” What you appear not to realize is that their argument rests on a fundamental – and false – premise, what we might call the Premise of Hypostasization: “The land of Palestine properly belongs to a People, and we just have to figure out which one it really belongs to.”
Now, there are several reasonably compelling arguments in justification of Israel’s existence, and only one – and that one a particularly weak argument that is logically fallacious and that convinces only people who are already very heavily predisposed to the Jewish cause – depends on the Premise of Hypostasization. If the Premise of Hypostasization is jettisoned, the logical case for Israel remains entirely intact and the persuasive power of pro-Israel propaganda is weakened only among those who will accept the other arguments anyway. But if the Premise of Hypostasization is rejected, the jihadists and their apologists have nothing left to appeal to.
(As an aside: if the apologists try to appeal to some form of international law, then even setting aside the fact that the U.N. recognizes Israel, one of the most obvious and crippling flaws in international law is the degree to which those who created it were themselves ensnared in the fallacy of hypostasization. The fundamental flaw that makes it practically impossible for the U.N. ever to be anything but grossly dysfunctional is precisely the same fundamental flaw that made the Articles of Confederation destined to fail, which flaw the Americans who were involved in drawing up the U.N. Charter have no excuse for failing to foresee. It was spelled out in the Federalist long ago, and it is precisely the habit of trying to build arguments upon the idea that “nations” and “peoples” and “states” have hypostases, i.e., that they exist as something more than a mere linguistic shortcut. In short, to appeal to international law in order to say that Israel has no right to exist, is itself a form of the appeal to the fallacious and destructive Premise of Hypostasization. I mention this as an aside precisely because I don’t want to send Ghost and myself haring off along the international law detour, knowing as I do that, on this subject, there is between us a great gulf fixed.)
Thus the one thing that no sensible advocate of Israel should ever do, is to make use of any argument that implictly validates the Premise of Hypostasization. Once that premise has been accepted, pretty much any group can come up with a good enough list of grievances against the group to rationalize, to its own satisfaction, its own right to play McCoy to its oppressors’ Hatfield. As long as Palestinian culture continues to breed into its children a visceral conviction that their grandparent’s grievances are their own and that Jewish children’s grandparents’ misdeeds warrant expiation by the villians’ grandchildren, there will never be peace in Israel; for if there is ever peace, it will be because there is no Israel.
So for the sake of the peace all Israelis would like to see their children and grandchildren enjoy, let us all jettison any and all arguments that implicitly validate the great Hypostatic Lie upon which all defenses of anti-Israeli terrorism ineluctably depend.
Does that make sense?
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 09:52 PM
GD: My apologies, but I am still having great difficulties with your arguments about the purported rights of the Arabs to Israel; your last response does not seem responsive to anything I said; a nation should, logically, possess an historical/moral right to its land, or, as history has been demonstrated, a right to possess the land through political or military "fiat"; either way, I believe I have demonstrated that the Jews were the historical citizens of Israel, as compared to the Arabs/muslims/"Palestinians." Your response does not appear to address these points, and digresses -- which I guess is a form of inability to recognize the lack of foundationfor your position. To respond to your present statements (I know, I am breaking my rules of discussion here; my apologies). In past societies, prior to the advent of PC responses to unprovoked attacks on ones civilian population, if one nation was attacked by another, and had the ability to cause considerable damage to the other, the "defending" nation would instill the "fear and absolute reprisal" factor in their enemies (see Dresden after the allied bombings); they would attack in a disproportionate fashion, cause considerable damage and instill considerable fear in the aggressor; the aggressor would think twice, probably 20 times, before attacking again. The present-day status of UN and world opinion no longer seems to permit disproportionate responses -- except when the responses are against the Israelis; so Israel is confronted with the 2nd Intifada after the Israelis gave up significant rights/land won in multiple wars instigated against them, after Camp David, etc.; Israel had 700 rockets fired on civilian populations, without provocation, after Gaza became Judenrein; Israel had invasions by enemies, kidnapping and murder of their soldiers, without provocation, more than 6 years after Lebanon became Judenrein; Israel remains confronted by psychotic murderers who publicly avow destruction of the Jewish state, and genocide of every Jew in Israel; the old time political fiat was backed up with fear of significant retribution; that type of response no longer seems to be available -- to the Israelis. So this is what society is left with. We forget lessons that should have been learned from history, and G-d forbid, history has a tendency to repeat itself when this occurs. To be very frank, I miss some of the old time righteous political and military fiat, based upon a sense of true justice -- you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone; you start with me, I will respond disproportionately, and you will regret it.
Posted by: Saul Davis | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 08:05 PM
GD,
That was a very impassioned oracle you just delivered. I have to agree with you in that I do not think that we will ever have world peace. As the pertubations brought about by different cultures and their values clashing on the world stage are damped by global connectivity, we will see more "energy" intoduced into the system because of diminishing resources. We might think and act more alike, but we will still have resource issues.
If we solve the resource issue, we are left with your oracle: original sin, or the sins of the fathers visited upon their sons. Only if the world becomes a global government of law and responsibility lies only with the self, and there is no disparity of reward for action or lack of action will there be true peace. Or would that be stasis?
Being the cro-magnon that I am, I do not seek equal results regardless of input. It destroys the motivation for improvement. We see apathy and suicide rates go up in those types of society. I also do not like antiseptic interactions. If I am with someone exactly like myself, we do not really talk much. I need people to interact with, not automatons. The variety of cultures and their approaches to problems generate change and create the chaos in which we live. Would I like the end of fighting, hunger, sickness? You bet. Will we ever get there? Probably not.
I do not see the future as a dire place. I see it as my home: an untidy house that could become less cluttered, but it should be lived in, not displayed as a museum. I fear for a future where there is no diversity or difference of opinion. True, there would be no war, but we would just be ants. Utopia achieved. What next for humanity?
I guess I am agreeing with your vision, but I have different lighting.
Posted by: Patrick | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 06:19 PM
Thank you for the kind comments Kenny.
I have always found the differences in the Greek civilization quite fascinating, with Sparta being a very unique social experiment.
I am trying to get away from projecting my world view upon others. Like you said, most of their rhetoric appears to be absolutist, but their puzzling actions are not always.
I think that they believe in jihad with absolute devotion just as the Spartans did in the dictums of Lycurgus. I am looking more at the application of their ethics in their decisions. When palestinians are injured, where do they go? They typically try go to the Israeli hospital so that they get better treatment and come back to do more damage later. Just as with the 9-11 crew, they will violate many of their beliefs for a greater cause. Think of all the western ways that they rail against, but use quite effectively against us. This smacks of a relativistic approach to their actual decisionmaking. Who knows, we might soon see Hiz or Ham have a Spartan Sphacteria island moment (when they surrendered to the vastly superior Athenian force instead of having their beautiful death that they prayed to Eros for). I wouldn't count on it anytime soon. Then again, the Athenians were not expecting it either. (Hope springs eternal)
I, like many, usually comment that the old leaders are not the ones with the bombs on. Shouldn't they be? If the were simply corrupt westerners, we could say they are cowards and do not practice what they preach; however, they keep attracting more supporters. Their making the bombs and planning many bombings is indeed more effective than a charismatic leader walking into a cafe and blowing himself up, thus becoming a holy martyr (the ideal, isn't it?). Unfortunately, he would not draw more mules, I mean dedicated jihadists. How could you resolve these actions if they were true believers, and meant everything they said?
That is why I went in this direction of greatest utility. I like my world to make sense, even if it is a twisted sense, I prefer to be able to do predictive analysis on the world around. I am not sure this train of thought is truly defensible in the long run, but it was an interesting approach (and it was a welcome break from my current research).
Posted by: Patrick | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 05:39 PM
The point was that what has been historically established by political and military fiat must(at some point in time) either be accepted fait accompli, and then diplomatically negotiated for further accomodations, or political and military fiat will continue to be required (constantly re-asserted) for its maintenance. There will be no concord or concensus...no willingness to cooperate. Causes for continued friction will mount, and be added to the never-ending list of violations that prevent acceptance.
Quasi-rational historical discussions designed to achieve a sense of legitimacy for the fiat are ineffective, because there is no legitimacy (in history), only fiat.
Legitimacy is a social construct that requires some degree of concensus and acceptance.
Even logic does not confer legitimacy...for there to be legitimacy there must be some agreement.
Legitimacy cannot be rooted in the legacy of historical injustices other than to motivate the resolve necessary to repudiate them.
There is no agreement, and no amount of historical argumentation will make it so...because the historical argument goes on ad infinitum...
At some point the parties must stop fighting and in some way accept the status quo...were ever they are, and in whatever condition that point in time yields. This process has happened between peoples over and over throughout history.
For the Israelies, the Palestinian extremists/rejectionists have not been vanquished as an adversary...they are defiant and will not accept the status quo. They fight for a different status quo before they will yield.
It is all a testimony to utter defiance against the odds, and human stubborness...however legitimacy will not come until the will to stop, on both sides, is found...until the point at which to stop is determined...
Meanwhile, there is only injustice compiled on injustice as far as the human eye can see...as deep as the human soul can plumb.
In many ways it is a particularly cursed land...at the same time the epitome of all land cursed with the dubious honor of human presence.
The alternative to political and military fiat begins at the point in time in which the parties accept that which fiat begot, and proceed to legitimacy from acceptance of the status quo.
No amount of ruminating over past wrongs and historical claims will achieve that point in time. All that must be, in time, transcended, forgiven and forgotten.
The "final solution" is, of course, for one side to totally annihilate the other...there is great history of this...entire peoples from whom nothing will be heard again...sometimes the history that they ever existed itself erased.
That solution has become increasingly difficult in the modern world...and has always underestimated the defiant persistence of the human spirit even in the face of oblivion. The Jews and other ethnic groups have survived attempts to ethnically cleanse the land...in most cases the victims have prevailed, sometimes surviving longer than their aggressors.
So, some compromise will be necessary...the question is when the parties will find that point. Meanwhile, there is no legitimacy...and their never was logic...only passion, and stubborness, and defiance.
In contemplating all of this, one might wonder when one accepts slavery...disenfrachisement...relegation to the dust bins of history...oblivion?
Some have...some have not, regardless of the completeness of their defeat...the perfectness of their deselection from the natural processes of human dischord.
When does one see even in the last act of defiance the majesty of the human spirit...the tattered barbarians declaring their people's need to feel conquered as they face the Roman phalanx with the decapitated head of a Roman messenger dangling from its scalp in plain view?
It would seem the Palestinians and Hizballah need to feel conquered...but beware...the legitimacy of the seeds sown by every conquest are prone to be questioned for eternity.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 05:21 PM
Patrick,
I'll have to think that one over, but the Islamofascists are some of the last people I would call utilitarians of any sort...not saying you're wrong, just that it would never have occurred to me to try analyzing them from that angle. I think they are much more driven by absolutes than by utilitarianism, and that jihad is seen as a moral absolute. In fact I think the appeal of some of the moderates that Alexandra has linked to is precisely a utilitarian appeal -- "every time we listen to you fanatics we lose more land" -- and is likely to fail on that ground. Whereas the jihadist attitude is "victory or death," and their supporters' attitude is like the southern Lebanese guy who was recently quoted on CNN (I think) as saying that he supported Hizbullah because economic well-being was less important than their "dignity."
But, even if they aren't utilitarian in a Western sense -- that is, even if their ends are not Western ends -- still it might be useful to try thinking of them as utilitarians in pursuit of what we would see as largely insane, or at least ludicrously disproportionately unimportant, ends. It's a very interesting idea and well worth playing with.
Your stuff on Sparta was quite good. I would add that Sparta's institutions were shaped by the overriding fact that their economy depended entirely on the Helots and the Helots had them greatly outnumbered; therefore all other considerations gave way in the face of the utilitarian need to keep the Helots under the thumb; as a consequence, it's impossible to exaggerate the difference between the ruins of Athens and the (pretty much nonexistent) ruins of Sparta.
I also have always though it interesting that the iron money thing tended to work well right up until Spartan generals left the Spartan plain and got out into the real world where real money was available -- at which point they were notoriously eager to be corrupted.
And of course my favorite example of that laconic wit is Leonidas's remark upon being told that the Persians had so many archers their arrows would block out the sun: "Then we will fight in the shade."
(I was once, in the long distant pre-software-consulting past, a classics major; so I get all excited any time people start talking about ancient Greeks, even though I'm slowly going fuzzy on all the details.)
Finally, while I'm certainly a Lockean on political theory, I'd have to say that on ethics I'm more of a Thomist than anything else -- and the subsidiary but essential role that utilitarian considerations play in Thomistic ethical analysis is an interesting counterpoint to the dominant role those considerations assume in Mill.
Your comment is worth much more of a response than that but I have fires to fight at the moment. Very nice comment, very thought-provoking.
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 03:57 PM
Sal,
I wanted to address the ethics piece you mentioned (UN only thinks it is a legal issue). I have long been troubled with suitably “tagging” the radical Islamic world into an ethical theory I understand. I have frequently taken the intellectually easy way out and just written them off because their worldview is so self-destructive. They were basically insane or completely irrational. I based this upon their lack of empathy for any other people (or religious group of their own people) and their willingness to sacrifice their children. As Golda Meier said, “There will be no peace in the Middle East until the Arabs love their children more than they hate the Jews." This same willingness to sacrifice the next generation led to the final defeat of Sparta (the Thebans destroyed the last vestige of Spartan might, when they killed 400 of the only 1000 full Spartans living during a single battle). I think the Islamo-fascists are simply warped utilitarians just as the Spartans were. (Same for the majority of the UN)
To give credit to my inspiration, I was watching a DVD with my kids as part of our summer review of Ancient Civilizations titled the Spartans, produced by PBS. I recommend it if you have access to the program (library, Netflix, etc). What does that have to do with the ethics point? I saw many of the same indicators in Spartan society as we see in the Islamo-fascist camp. I pulled out an old anthology (Dimensions of Ethical Thought) that has selected works of JS Mills, Kant, Locke, Brandt, Ross etc. From those readings, I believe the Spartan philosophy on ethical decision making is really a utilitarian view along the lines of John Stuart Mills.
Believe it or not, some of the more ruthless Spartan approaches are replicated in militant Islam. Upon birth, the state decided if the child should live or die (the Wiki for Sparta disagrees with some of what I am recounting, but I am using the PBS show as my source for now). For the next several years, the family raised the male children until they were seven when they entered into the state sponsored "education" (madrassas) that lasted until they were selected to a warrior band-club (militias). During their first five years, they lived as vicious animals increasing their strength (led by older boys). These "students" were given very little and the strongest survived by taking from the weaker. If you were "caught" taking from the weaker members of your training group, you were punished, not because you stole, but because you were caught (definitely reinforces the shame-blame arguments in earlier forums). During this time the specially gifted boys of the class (Crypteia), were reputedly given knives and released from their training groups so they could hunt and kill slaves (their fellow Greeks). This ruthless savagery kept the slaves (deemed less than human) in check. It also enforced the separatism of groups within the physical limits of Sparta. Once the training was complete, the warrior clubs selected their new members. If you were not selected, you were no longer a true Spartan.
The warrior-clubs sure sound like the various militias every group has today. The Spartan daily activities revolved around the warrior clubs. Sounds like the Militias pre-eminance in their societies. An interesting fact I had never picked up on before was the strange dual king setup of Sparta. Either one could make the decision of Sparta, in fact the last King of Sparta Agesilaus picked a fight (one of many) with the Thebans and his fellow King had to actually fight it (lost and was the end of Spartan power). We see this dual leadership in many instances today. I wonder if any of this is intentional?
Another scary similariaty: With your shield, or upon it says the Spartan mother. What does the current Palestinian mother say? Three of my sons have died for Palestine, and I will send the other three. Sounds like a successful election platform, doesn’t it? Most westerners would readily sacrifice their life instead of sending child after child packed with explosives to their death.
For all of you Spartan aficionados, please do not think I am comparing Lycurgus to Mohammed. There were several interesting things he did well in his social experiment that were good, but the demand for no change (sound familiar) led to Sparta’s destruction. I applaud the first concept of citizenship, the attempt to found a utopia (no money, etc.), the power women held in the Spartan society (and their famed Laconic insults-I loved the examples on the DVD; as Lord Black Adder would say, “It’s something new, and spontaneous: It’s called wit!”), the inclusion of the youth by constantly refreshing the warrior-clubs so there would not be a “disenfranchised youth” with no future, etc. Unfortunately, the darker side of the Spartan society and the refusal to change anything led to their “perfect” society’s downfall. Refusal to modernize…sound familiar? Back to the ethical framework…
As we all know, utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory that considers the moral rightness of an action by the nature of the consequences. (The UN-We would have peace in the Middle East if Israel would simply cease to exist). Good political cartoon: http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/stantis.asp
John Stuart Mill said that “utility" or the “greatest happiness principle holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Mill was perfectly clear in "The Common Good" that the agent's own happiness was not the standard but the happiness of all concerned was. In a fascist state, the happiness is the good of the state/community. Let me be clear when I use the term fascism, I mean to denote governments that are extremely nationalist and anti-materialistic. I am not using fascism in the authoritarian sense.
If the Islamo-facists discount any non-believers as less than human they can apply these rules to only themselves and claim the mantle of “utilitarianism”. (Like the Spartans did: Slaves and the middle class (not full Spartans, e.g. were not selected to a warrior-club upon finishing their education) were only to serve the Spartan ideal. They had no voice and did not matter.)
Sidgewick and Moore espouse a kind of act-utilitarianism. “An act is objectively right if no other act the agent could perform would produce better consequences…a rather atomistic theory: the rightness of a single act is fixed by its effects on the world.“ Rule utilitarianism is “ the right of an act is fixed, not by its relative utility, but by the utility of having a relevant moral rule, or of most or all members of a certain class of acts being performed.”
I see radical Islam (Islamo-fascist) as act-utilitarianism adherents that only believe members of their own sect matter. A case could be made for the rule-utilitarianism, but you start having to parse every single action. An example would be Muhammed saved Eli by giving him medical aid after he shot Eli, so he could torture him in front of a camera. As a rule-utilitarianist, Muhammed did a "bad" thing by giving aid to an Israeli. He did a “good” thing later by instilling fear into Israelis by torturing an Israeli and then broadcasting it. As an act-utilitarianist, the entire group of actions was good because of the consequence. Now if we add the deaths of innocents nearby, and subscribe to act-utilitarianism, Muhammed is still OK. Using rule-utilitarianism, he is doing more bad than good. Very simplistic, but we could explore this if you want.
This is of course against what most westerners believe since most of us were raised on the tenants of Locke who discusses equality of man in “Of Civil Government”.
…no one ought to harm another in his, life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorize us to destroy another, as if we were made for another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours.”
When wars are just in his “Of the State of War”
“…, I should have the right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred; and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the common law of reason, have no other rule but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.”
Of course there is much more by Locke that we westerners hold true, whether we studied him or not. I only pulled a few pieces. Whether we believe in a “Maker” or not, Western nations try to see all mankind as their fellow men (gender neutral).
Islamo-fascist and the Spartans see a hierarchal structure of men, with themselves at the top. For the Islamo-fascist, only they (Islamic Men, not women) are considered in the calculus of the greater good. Others count for ½ or ¼ or even nothing at all. Until we have the same frame of reference, there will never be peace.
We know that Islam's goal if for all to be followers of Islam and the last Jew killed. For them, the very existence of Israel prevents their goals. See John Locke, On the State of War...Israel, do what you need to do.
Sorry this was rushed and somewhat muddled, but I have not posted lately due to research demands…back to the grindstone
Regards,
Patrick
Posted by: Patrick | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 03:06 PM
Oops: gotta proof my rants; "Paletinian" should be changed to "Palestinian" -- or to be more accurate, "so-called 'Palestinian'"; GD, perhaps you should read Joan Peter's "From Time Immemorial" -- especially her introduction.
Posted by: Saul Davis | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 09:13 AM
GD: Your reasoning completely escapes me; what is the alternative to political and military fiat; either way, Israel is legitimately present in its historic homeland, and any cries of illegitimacy are, historically, more appropriately applied to the "Palestinian" claims to the land now re-possessed by the Jews. As I stated earlier, if you do not believe in political or military fiat, but defend so-called "Palestinian" claims to Israel based upon their purported historic presence in Israel, then the Jewish claim is even stronger because of the historic continued presence of Jews in Israel that predated the existence of any "Muslims," and continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. So what is the basis for your assertion of "Paletinian" claims to Israel; no political or military fiat; and no real historical claim; your "logic" completely escapes me.
Posted by: Saul Davis | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 09:05 AM
The modern state of Israel is an artifact of European colonialism and 19th Century thought processes that were repleat with racist ideas. European colonialism left its mark throughout the world.
Many good things can be said of Israel. However, its existence as a nation is no more sacred than the existence of any other peoples...with or without lands and nations.
In the Levant, Lebanon was supposed to be a Christian State because the French said so. All through the Middle East, Africa, the Indian sub-continent and even the Americas there are borders and nations that exist expressly as a result of the gerrymandering of European imperialists. In Europe itself...they simply fought to establish borders and nations...and it probably would have been so in the rest of the world as well. Hitler was simply a neanderthal archtype that was trying to do German business the old fashion way...by conquering other lands...it was simply met with a 20th Century sensiblity that not only defeated the AXIS, but ended the concept of imperial colonialism as a legitimate strategy.
Who ever asked the question "how far back do you want to go" is spot on. There are thousands of issues, currently accepted fait accompli.
The point was that what has been historically established by political and military fiat must either be accepted fait accompli, and then diplomatically negotiated for further accomodations, or political and military fiat will continue to be required for its maintenance.
Quasi-rational historical discussions designed to achieve a sense of legitimacy for the fiat are ineffective, because there is no legitimacy, only fiat.
Main Entry: fi·at
Pronunciation: 'fE-"ät, -"at, -&t; 'fI-"at
Function: noun
1 : DECREE
2 : an authoritative but arbitrary order
Following the logic of Zionism, the United States better watch out...there are entire Nations that historically lay claim to its lands...and so it is true in numerous areas around the world.
Big Foot, a Sioux leader on the U.S. Army’s list of troublemaking Indians, was stopped while en route to convene with the remaining Sioux chiefs. U.S. Army officers forced him and his people to relocate to a small camp close to the Pine Ridge Agency so that the soldiers could more closely watch the old chief. That evening, December 28th, the small band of Sioux erected their tipis on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek. The following day during an attempt by the officers to collect any remaining weapons from the band, one young Sioux warrior refused to relinquish his arms. A struggle followed in which his weapon discharged into the air. Other young Sioux warriors, dressed in their Ghost Shirts, responded by brandishing previously concealed weapons; the U.S. forces responded with carbine firearms. Two bands of Native American reinforcements, the Oglalas and Brules, arrived at the creek after hearing the gunshots. When the fighting had concluded, 39 U.S. soldiers lay dead amongst the 153 dead Sioux, 62 of which were women and children.
Following the massacre, chief Kicking Bear officially surrendered his weapon to General Nelson A. Miles. Outrage in the Eastern United States emerged as the general population learned about the events that had transpired. The U.S. government had insisted on numerous occasions that the Native American had already been successfully pacified, and many Americans felt the U.S. Army actions were harsh; some related the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek to the "ungentlemanly act of kicking a man when he is already down." Public uproar played a role in the reinstatement of the previous treaty’s terms including full rations and more monetary compensation for lands taken away.
Wherever there are problems, there seem to be people. I hope we never find the "final solution" for ourselves.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 04:57 AM
GD:
I have little to add to the other comments except a few remarks. 1) The term "Palestine" derives from Latin, i.e., from the time of the imperial Roman occupation of the region approx. 2000 years ago. (About 600 years before the dawn of Islam, and before ethnic Arabs began spreading out of the Arabian peninsula in a large-scale fashion). 2) There has been a continuous (if fluctuating in numbers) Jewish presence in the region since Biblical times. 3) Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and its collapse at the end of WWI, there were no modern Arab "nation-states" since virtually all Arabs lived under the Ottomans and subsequently under either French (present-day Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) or British (present day Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, and the nations of the Arabian peninsula) protectorates, and virtually all of the nation-states were artificially created by French and British imperial administrators. (Turkey, the center of the defunct Ottoman empire, remained largely Turkish and evolved a vociferously secular state under Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s; Iran, with help from British colonialists, was largely Persian and came under the rule of the Pahlavis, with brief period of popular republic overthrown with CIA help in the early 1950s). 4) Recognition of a Palestinian Arab nation-state is a compromise, one I'm willing to accept if they stop making war on Israel and Jews, but I see no historic precedent for a Palestinian Arab nation-state in known Middle East history. Many, including far-right-wing Jews but not just them, would say the old Transjordan (i.e., Jordan east of the Jordan river, currently presided by the Hashemites) was the originally-intended "Palestinian" state and that claims to the W. Bank, Gaza, etc. are illegitimate. I wouldn't go that far. Incidentally, Palestinians (people from W. of the Jordan river) make up the majority in Jordan. 5) Jews and Israel are always blamed for "creating" the "Palestinian refugee problem". In fact, from 1948 (the formal founding of the modern Israeli nation) to 1967 (when Nasser foolhardily made war on Israel and the other front-line Arab nations foolhardily followed him), Jordan, Egypt, and other Arab nations had the overwhelming majority of Palestinian "refugees" living in their countries; they chose to keep them impoverished, disenfranchised, and embittered as a way of using them, both strategically and "morally" as a weapon against Israel, which they hoped to destroy. Contrast this to Jewish refugees, by the hundreds of thousands, who were forcibly expelled and their propery "expropriated" (that is, stolen) by Arabs throughout the region: Tunisia, Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, etc. Israel simply took them in. These Jews, with roots in Arab lands (many of whom, ironically, had belonged to secular left-wing anti-colonialist parties in North Africa, Iraq, and elsewhere), are the Sefardic population of Israel. They tend to be much more virulently anti-Arab than their generally more liberal, secularist Ashkenazic (European-rooted) Jewish brethren. Why do you suppose that is, GD? Sincerely, Mac Brachman
Posted by: mac Brachman | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 12:00 AM
GD: Below are some common sources for the facts stated; my actual sources are the Old Testament [which predates Muslims by many centuries], the Talmud [which predates Muslims by many centuries], and commentaries on the Talmud [which also predate Muslims]; but here are some later sources that are available to you:
1. http://www.tampabayprimer.org/index.cfm?action=articles&drill=viewArt&art=533
2. http://www.geocities.com/christian_crusade/inhofe.html
[a couple of typos -- such as the '76 six day war should be the '67 six day war; but otherwise basically factually accurate]
3. http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressreleases/peace.htm
4. http://world.std.com/~camera/docs/backg/tunnel.html
5. http://www.danielpipes.org/article/84
etc.
Posted by: Saul Davis | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 11:55 PM
GD: Your arguments are incomprehensible. How far back do you want to go? Will you at least admit that there was a continuous Jewish presence in Israel since well before the Babylonian exile; there was a continuous Jewish presence despite the ravages of the barbaric Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans after them; the Arab/Muslim/Kurdish presence only came many centuries later, after countless genocidal wars in Israel, where unarmed Jews were murdered by Muslims, Cristians, Muslims again, etc.; but the Jewish presence in Israel continued throughout; so who's land is it; again, how far back do you want to go; if you claim that the Muslims had the right to Israel after they conquered the land, basically abandoned it, then repopulated it after it began to blossom under Jewish repatriation, then your "logic" completely escapes me. For if that is your contention (which at best it seems to be) then as Jess stated, to the [present] victors belong the spoils. The fact remains that there has been a consitent/continuous Jewish presence in Israel well before there had been any Muslim presence. That is an inescapable fact.
Posted by: Saul Davis | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 10:29 PM
http://ageofhooper.blogspot.com/2006/07/i-just-got-back-from-israel-rally.html
The above address is to the Pro-Israeli rally today. Dog-gone made me cry, I tell ya'..
............................................
.............................................
Ghost,
does that ancient saying, " to the victor go the spoils." mean anything to you in relationship to your above post. Did the 1920 thingie you mention have anything to do with WW1 ?..........................AND finally, do you think we should all go back to our nations of origin and leave this country to the American Indians ?
PLEEEEAAAASE answer me.
Restore my faith ........
Posted by: jess1dering | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 10:08 PM
Zionism...racism?
"Theodor Herzl was born in 1860 in Budapest, Hungary to a largely assimilated Jewish family. Herzl moved with his family to Vienna when he was still a young man and proceeded to receive his degree in law in 1884. After less than a year of working in the field of law, Herzl decided to take his life in a different direction and focus on his writing, a skill for which he had a natural proficiency."
"In 1891 Herzl was sent to Paris to act as a correspondent for the New Free Press, an influential, liberal Viennese newspaper. While on assignment in Paris in 1894 to cover the Dreyfus Trial, Herzl came face to face with "the Jewish problem"."
"Alfred Dreyfus was a French-Jewish army officer during the Franco-Prussian War, which France had recently lost. The French military, in an attempt to find a scapegoat for their humiliating defeat, trumped up charges of treason against Dreyfus."
"In January of 1895, Alfred Dreyfus was subjected to a very humiliating and very public ceremony where he was stripped of his rank and court-martialed, all while the crowd changed "death to the Jews". Herzl was in attendance.""
""The Jewish problem", the fact that the Jews, as an ethnic minority, would never fully be accepted by their host nations and almost always be blamed for the troubles of those nations, suddenly became very real to Herzl. God had foretold, through His prophets, that the Jews would never be accepted in the nations of their exile and would suffer much persecution as a result."
"In 1896 Herzl published a booklet entitled "The Jewish State" stating that the only lasting solution to "the Jewish problem" was a national homeland for the Jews. The booklet outlined a number of aspects for such a state, including immigration rights and form of government. The booklet and Herzl's ideas met with mixed reactions from the Jewish community.
"Many embraced the idea and asked Herzl to lead the way, others embraced the idea but were unwilling to take such drastic steps themselves, and some, including most Orthodox and Reform Jews, rejected the idea outright."
"Herzl accepted the request for him to lead this new Zionist movement and on August 29, 1897 in Basle, Switzerland Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress. The First Zionist Congress established the World Zionist Organization to build a financial base for the Zionist enterprise and adopted the Basel Plan aimed at forwarding Herzl's original ideas laid out in "The Jewish State"."
"Herzl was elected to chair the Congress as well as the World Zionist Organization, a post that would keep him very busy until his untimely death seven years later. Herzl summed up the First Zionist Congress by stating, "In Basel I founded the Jewish state...maybe in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will realize it." And with that very real prophecy, Zionism as a political movement was born."
1975 November 10: UN General Assembly passes Resolution 3379, in which Zionism is declared "racist", with 72 votes to 35 (32 abstentions).
1991 December 16: UN General Assembly revokes Resolution 3379, with 111 votes to 25 (13 abstentions).
However...
Any resolution of the Israel-Palestine issue will have to either accept the existence of Israel as the status quo and somehow, someway create a viable Palestine...or some side will have to prevail in warfare, because there is no argument that prevails in its justification for Israel's existence over and above that of any other concoction of colonialism.
The original colonization of Palestine by Jews, while understandable, is without justification. Zionists explored other alternatives like Africa...however the Levant was the ancient homeland before the Babylonian thing.
It was an old maxim that Palestine was a "land without people for a people without a land". Of course the land was not a land without people, except in the racist viewpoint that Arabs/Blacks/Asians are less human then Europeans.
The land was populated by Muslim and Christian Arabs, and a small amount of native Jews. Another often given justification for the colonization of Palestine was that the land was sparsley populated. This was not true. "Britain's high commissioner for Palestine, John Chancellor... said all cultivatible land was occupied" John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Theodre Herzl, the father of zionism, advocated a discreet form of ethnic cleansing. "We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us.
"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly." (America And The Founding Of Israel, p. 49, Righteous Victims, p. 21-22)
In 1917, the British government officially announced it would Colonize the land of Palestine, thus giving Eureopan Jews a homeland, without any consulutation of the natives. The period of the British mandate started around 1920.
Jews backed with the military might of the British army began colonizing the territority. The jewish poplulation of Palestine was 10%."The Israel-Arab Reader" ed. Laquer and Rubin.
It is important to note that at the time of the partition of palestine, Jews legally*(according to the law of the british occupation) owned 6 percent of the land, yet were given 50 percent.
Alson, one of the claims that is used to justify the Israeli takeover of palestine is that there never was an arab state of palestine. True, there was not. This reveals the ethnocentric nature of the zionist philosophy.
Are people to be deprived of there land, acess to natural resources, and dignity because they did not have a state of their own, since they had instead had the fortune of living under empires or Kingdoms?
Another claim is that the palestinian's did not have national aspirations. The answer to this question is irrelevant, but the fact that the question is being asked is illuminating. What is so grand about nationalism? Do those who don't desire a nation state not have a right to be free from colonialism? Do they not have the right to the land they have occupied for thousands of years? Should we as westerner's demand at the barrell of a gun that all people adopt the form of society we call a nation-state? Zionism was a philosophy of the Jews having a thier own state, not a state where they would share political power. A comprimise was impossible.
No matter how it is sliced and diced, Israel is an artifact of 19th Century thinking and Colonial practice.
It's existence has to be taken fait accompli...the only solutions are either diplomatically negotiated or by maintained by political and military fiat. This latter is very much the way in which the status quo was largely created.
There is no solvable argument...there is no reason...there are only artifacts and an extreme, but not uncommon, legacy of european colonialism and 19th Century thought.
Was 19th Century thought riddled with racism? You bet.
"1815- African-American Quaker and maritime entrepreneur Paul Cuffee (or Cuffe) financed and captained a successful voyage to Sierra Leone where he helped a small group of African-American immigrants establish themselves. Cuffee believed that African Americans could more easily "rise to be a people" in Africa than in America with its system of slavery and its legislated limits on black freedom. Cuffee also envisioned a black trade network organized by Westernized blacks who would return to Africa to develop its resources while educating its people in the skills they had gained during captivity. Cuffee died in 1817 without fully realizing his dream."
"1817- The partial success of Paul Cuffee's African venture encouraged white proponents of colonization to form an organization to repatriate those free African Americans who would volunteer to settle in Africa. Prominent Americans such as Henry Clay, John Randolph of Roanoke, and Justice Bushrod Washington were members of the American Colonization Society (ACS) during its early years. Many free African-Americans, however, including those who had supported Paul Cuffee's efforts, were wary of this new organization. They were concerned that it was dominated by Southerners and slave holders and that it excluded blacks from membership. Most free African-Americans wanted to stay in the land they had helped to build. They planned to continue the struggle for equality and justice in the new nation."
Sound like a familiar thought process?
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 09:41 PM
Dr. V,
WHAT ???? I have to try to catch my breath !
Why does somebody always have to be the pitiful underdog. It's CRAP like the above that is the most dangerous propaganda. The American Press is
always churning out that sort of nonsense. They seem to think in their superiority they must champion the " less able" . What an insult to their poor victims.
. Black, brown red, white, yellow, NONE are so inferior that they need be pitied ( perhaps the greatest indignity a human soul can endure )
And what's with all the color coding of people ??
I honestly believe that most people ( of COURSE there are mentally or emotionally -challenged exceptions and those exceptions have representation in every race) judge a person by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin ( thanks, Martin ) People judge people on their experience.
Sorry about the strong reaction, but cut me a break !!!
Posted by: jess1dering | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 09:25 PM
"Is it the cries of brown children with flies in their eyes?" says British blogger-poet P. Iscariot.
For Tex-Aviv couture houses, this season brown is the new black.
It's clearly a dirty color, the color of feces, Mohammedans and Hispanics.
The color of Arabian olive oil and Spanish grease.
Brown is also the color of terrorism: just look at the post-mortem pictures of Che Guevara and Zarqawi, and the fetid corpses of Shiite children littering south Lebanon’s valley of death...
Bushmert’s phosphorus bombs will bleach their oily skin and purify their dark souls.
Posted by: Dr Victorino de la Vega | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 08:04 PM
Alexandra,
My fundamental test for anti-Semitism is the presence of a double standard: do they condemn Israel or Jews for things they wouldn't condemn other people for? Alternatively, do they use negatively loaded or abusive language to describe Jewish behavior that they describe in far milder terms when they see it in people who aren't Jewish? Do they use special pleading to latch onto and highlight everything bad that can possibly be attributed to Jews, while doing their best to ignore anything that might redound to the Israelis' credit? (As an aside, you will note that, based on the last criterion there, I don't buy the MSM's pretense of "supporting the troops.")
Thus if somebody who just likes colorful language or likes to flame people, uses some vividly critical language when talking about Israel, but he also aims the same sort of language at just about everybody else he gives a hard time to, that doesn't seem like anti-Semitism to me. Bad manners, perhaps, depending on the context, but not anti-Semitism. But if somebody who is normally polite to Satan himself consistently says things like, "You know, that's so typical of Israelis" -- meaning always something bad -- then I figure he has issues.
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 07:53 PM
Alexandra,
Sure, no problem. [grinning] I could probably reel off twenty old Soviet jokes that turn on traditional Russian anti-Semitism without stopping to think hard, but I think my very favorite -- which depends for its force on your understanding how revolted a Great Russian traditionally was expected to be by the very thought of being (ugh!) Jewish -- is the following. I have deprived it of much of its color by stripping out all of the remarkably obscene language without which most Russians find it impossible to tell an anekdot, and which would certainly be used by the director when talking about Jews (use of obscenity being one way Russian bureaucrats express their power over subordinates and social inferiors); but those who wish can recreate the general effect by inserting an f-bomb into every third word or so of the director's speeches, except when he's directly addressing the American lady whom he is obliged to suck up to.
Pyotr Ivanovich is working peacefully at his lathe when he gets a message: the director wants to see him. He trudges over to the director's office and the director greets him portentiously:
"Pyotr Ivanovich! The Rodina requires your services!"
Well, there can only be one answer to that. "Of course, Yuri Grigoriyevich, what is it that I must do?"
The director addresses him sternly. "It is a great sacrifice that we must ask you to make. You see, there are some American fellow-travelers who are coming to visit the factory two weeks from Friday, and we have been warned that some of them are very concerned about the Jewish problem. Now, Pyotr Ivanovich, you and I both know that we would never have any of those filthy Jews working in our factory; but it seems the Americans are going to want to talk to our Jews. So, Pyotr Ivanovich -- I know how distasteful this is to you -- but you are going to be our Jew. I have made arrangements for you to visit a synagogue and learn a few Jewish phrases, and you will be given Jewish clothing and one of their stupid little skullcaps. I have here an identity card for you as Yakov Lyevovich Chervoniy, and for the next two weeks everyone will address you as Yakov Lyevovich and will treat you as Jewish. Then the Americans will come and you will talk to them, and after they have gone you will go back to being Russian again, and we will all salute your patriotic effort in the service of the Motherland. Are we agreed?"
What can Pyotr Ivanovich say? "Soglasno, I agree."
The two weeks go by and the Americans arrive and are ushered into the director's office, and sure enough not two minutes have gone by before one loud-voiced Amerikanka asks, "But what about the Jews? We hear that Jews are not treated well in Soviet Russia and that there is much anti-Semitism. How do you treat Jews in this factory?"
The director puts on his most pained expression. "My dear lady, there is no anti-Semitism in our factory. We are happy to have Jews here and they are certainly eligible for promotion like anyone else; in fact our chief lathe operator is a Jew. One moment; I'll ask him to come in so you can talk to him." He turns to his secretary. "Vasiliy Yuriyevich, please ask Yakov Lyevovich to come here for a moment."
The secretary bows his head studiously over his work and pretends not to hear. The director is annoyed. "Vasiliy Yuriyevich! I ask you to call Yakov Lyevovich into the office immediately."
The secretary looks timorously at the director. "But Yuri Grigoriyevich, that is impossible."
"Impossible? How can it be impossible!?"
"Because, Yuri Grigoriyevich, last week Yakov Lyevovich emigrated to Israel."
------------
P.S. If you want something of the original flavor, the director's last line -- which the skilled joketeller would make especially profane in order to show that the director was so upset he'd forgotten that the Americans were there -- would be something more like, "Impossible? !@#$! your mother six times with !#$#ing epaulets and a !#$ing admiral's hat! How the @!#$!ing !@#$#@ can it be !@#$ing impossible!?"
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 07:44 PM
God Sal,
I haven't heard that word in a long time, I don't know why I always thought it was 'meshugana' so I looked it up and realized that it means a crazy person whereas 'meshuga' simply means crazy. Either way lol, you are right!
But it is interesting to discuss what is for each person a convincing argument, as to what they consider to be anti-Semitic. What is the line which you draw when hearing an obviously anti-Semitic comment? All the discussions I have had seem to result in the lines being re-drawn as the insults escalate, and goal posts moved, until one feels nothing is an insult to some people any more, their level of acceptance threshold has long been eroded. Either that or the excuses have got more creative. The UN seems to be blatantly open. It' s sad really...
Posted by: Alexandra | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 07:31 PM
"The United Nations High Representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) Javier Solana said during a press conference with Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni that the UN has no sufficient data to determine whether the Hizbullah can be included in the list of terror organizations. He also added that the issue at hand is legal, not ethical. (Ronny Sofer)"
Are these people completely meshuga (crazy)?
Posted by: Sal | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 07:09 PM
This is a great post to follow yesterday's on Juan Cole.
To answer your question Alexandra, I think that far too many like Cole are making excuses and claiming that they are merely expressing a political opinion against the Israeli government. Reading a Cole quote from yesterday from one of your links calling jews "butchers of Beirut" and other derogatory names is the definition of anti-Semitism "hostility or prejudice against jews". This man is prejudiced there is no question and hostile beyond reasonability. It has been an excuse of many to call it simple disagreement with policies. If you said such derogatory things about African Americans, you would definitely be called a racist, so why should this be any different.
The link to the UN at Reuters in your post tells an interesting story
"Relations between Israel and the United Nations plummeted after information emerged that U.N. peacekeepers on the Lebanon border suppressed video tapes of three soldiers being abducted by Hizbollah guerrillas in 2000."
"We know that they had line of sight and could see the actual kidnapping. They could have put roadblocks up to prevent Hizbollah from escaping. But they didn't lift a finger," said Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the U.N."
""There was an international force in place in 2006 and it didn't prevent the current crisis from erupting," Gold said. "What that means is that providing security for southern Lebanon requires more than a knee jerk proposal to put international forces on the ground."
They did nothing and they are nothing. I don't know why Bush is ever surprised as he is about any inaction by Kofi Annan.
The Arab world should know that Israel is doing them a favor by cleaning up the mess they themselves should be getting stuck into. You sleep with the enemy and this is what you get so Lebanon should not be surprised. And why should Israel not defend itself, it is not going to wait for UN to help, certainly not from the impotent Annan..
I was amazed by your revelations about the summit in South Africa I had not read that before anywhere else. Good work as usual.
Posted by: Ann | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 06:58 PM
UN is simply a third world corruptocracy like any other.
ANY OTHER.
Ignorant
Savage
Hopeless
Dean Acheson's warning was right on
Collect the parking fines and build the new Shea Stadium there. Let them rebuild in Ouagoudougou
Posted by: epaminondas | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 06:28 PM
Alexandra,
I agree about Dave's link. Your links are also excellent. Thank you for all you do.
Posted by: jess1dering | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 05:13 PM
Kenny, I hope you don't mind my reproducing your parable here. It seems appropriate.
.................................................
..................................................
There's an old joke from the Soviet Union that runs like this (you're expected to know that the shopkeepers would naturally steal most of the shoes and sell them out the back door on the black market):
A rumor has spread in Moscow that a particular store has shoes to sell, and the resulting line that has instantly formed, is three blocks long. An hour goes by as everyone stands patiently in the snow, and then the door opens and a clerk steps out.
"Comrades!" he calls, "I regret to say that there are not enough shoes for all of you. All Jews are ordered to step out of line and go home."
The Jews step out of line and trudge off disconsolately and the door closes. Another hour in the snow goes by, and then the door opens.
"Comrades! There are still not enough shoes. All who are not Party members are ordered to step out of line and go home."
Another hour.
"Comrades! There are still not enough shoes. All who have not been in the armed forces, defending the Rodina from her enemies, are ordered to step out of line and go home."
It is starting to get late.
"Comrades! There are still not enough shoes. All who did not fight in the Great Patriotic War, are ordered to step out of line and go home."
The day will end before long.
"Comrades! There are still not enough shoes. All who were not decorated for bravery under fire, are ordered to step out of line and go home."
There are two shrivelled and bent old Russian guys standing patiently in the snow. The sun is going down. The door opens one last time.
"Comrades! Forgive me, but there are no shoes."
One of the old soldiers looks over at the other in disgust and complains:
"Those f***ing Jews always manage to get the best of everything!"
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 03:07 PM
Posted by: jess1dering | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 05:09 PM
Excellent link Dave.
Posted by: Alexandra | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 03:41 PM
Stange how Some Arabs can grasp what the unUN doesnt:
Posted by: Dave | Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 03:27 PM