Arab Spring

[ila]

Originally Posted by randolph

Ila suggested that I set up a thread to discuss the Arab spring and the Middle east political situation.

What mystifies me is how the Palestinians (Gazinians) believe they won the latest round with Israel. Perhaps the political gurus on the forum would have some ideas on this.

The Palestinians think that they won because they actually did win the PR war. They did this by placing their firing positions in civilian populated areas such as apartment buildings, houses, neighbourhoods. Then they would fire rockets at Israel. The Israelis would return fire to take out the firing positions. Of course there would be civilian casualties and then the Palestinians would invite in the media to look at what the big bad Israelis did. The media, like the dutiful lapdogs that they are, would immediately scream long and loud how vile the Israelis are. The world would then condemn Israel. Meanwhile nothing would be reported on suicide bombers, rocket attacks, etc. on Israel.

Until the media actually report the news instead of giving their own biased opinions the Israelis will always lose the PR war.

[randolph]

Originally Posted by ila

The Palestinians think that they won because they actually did win the PR war. They did this by placing their firing positions in civilian populated areas such as apartment buildings, houses, neighbourhoods. Then they would fire rockets at Israel. The Israelis would return fire to take out the firing positions. Of course there would be civilian casualties and then the Palestinians would invite in the media to look at what the big bad Israelis did. The media, like the dutiful lapdogs that they are, would immediately scream long and loud how vile the Israelis are. The world would then condemn Israel. Meanwhile nothing would be reported on suicide bombers, rocket attacks, etc. on Israel.

Until the media actually report the news instead of giving their own biased opinions the Israelis will always lose the PR war.

The Palestinians have lots of legitimate grievances including the relentless colonization of their land by Israeli settlements. But what is more important for the Palistinians, winning media points or developing some kind of dialog with Israel? Israel is a very tiny country, it's about the size of Vermont and is extremely vulnerable to attack and it has very hostile neighbors.

[smc]

In my view, Israel is a colonial-settler state that has as little right to exist as white South Africa ever had to exist on the Azanian land. Israel loses the "PR war," as ila calls it, because most people in the world have a visceral negative reaction to colonization and relentless debasement of an entire people.

By the way, randolph, there is no such thing as a "Gazinian." People in Gaza are Palestinians.

[randolph]

SMC

By the way, randolph, there is no such thing as a "Gazinian." People in Gaza are Palestinians.

I made up the term Gazinian

[randolph]

SMC

In my view, Israel is a colonial-settler state that has as little right to exist as white South Africa ever had to exist on the Azanian land. Israel loses the "PR war," as ila calls it, because most people in the world have a visceral negative reaction to colonization and relentless debasement of an entire people.

The Jews and Arabs have both been in Palistine for thousands of years. It would seem that the Jews have a historical right to live in Palestine.
The Europeans have no historical right to live in south Africa. Also, for that matter, we have no historical right to live in North America.
The British well knew that a Jewish state in Palestine would cause endless trouble and they resisted it. I believe it was our doing that had a lot to do with the surviving European Jews succeeding in establishing a Jewish state in Palistine. Unfortunately, they learned a little to much from the Nazis about intolerance.

[ila]

Originally Posted by smc

In my view, Israel is a colonial-settler state that has as little right to exist as white South Africa ever had to exist on the Azanian land. Israel loses the "PR war," as ila calls it, because most people in the world have a visceral negative reaction to colonization and relentless debasement of an entire people...

So just where should the Israelis live, smc? They are on their ancestral land. The house of Israel and descendants have lived in the area of Israel for millennia. Even when the people of the twelve tribes of Israel were dispersed throughout the world there were still Israelis living in the area we now call Israel. The Arabs and the Israelis trace a common ancestry back to Abraham who, it is supposed, lived in the area of Israel.

As for the second part of your first statement I would like to know what you base this on. The current theory of evolution states that everyone alive today can trace their ancestry back to one female in southern Africa. Humans migrated out of Africa to colonize the rest of the world so it would be logical to say that no part of the world belongs to one race more than any other race.

Throughout the history of the world there has been one race or tribe moving into another?s area. The Turks, who come from the Asian steppes displaced the Greeks who had earlier displaced the Hittites. In the other direction the Greeks colonized Egypt to point of taking over the ruling class. The Greeks also colonized Sicily and southern Italy and deprived the Etruscans, who were there first, of their land.

The Hungarians are native to the steppes of Asia. The Visigoths who were originally from the area of the Black Sea settled in Spain. The Romans colonized most of Europe, parts of the Middle East, and northern Africa. The Celts drove out the original inhabitants of western Europe and went on to settle in Austria, Switzerland, northern Italy, France, Germany, and the UK. The Celts were in turn conquered by the Romans, the Franks, and the Germanic tribes all of which came out of the vast grasslands of western Asia.

The Scandinavians drove the Suomi north from their native land. They then turned their attention to the south occupying the lands of the Germanic tribes of western Europe.

The Persians tried to expand their empire west without much lasting success. They did however move east into Afghanistan and India.

The tribes of the Americas continually encroached on each other?s land.

So where is the cut-off point where it can be said that no one race or tribe allowed to settle anywhere other than where they are?

[franalexes]

In 1967 Israel was attacked on three fronts. Israel kicked ass and won Gaza, Golan heights and the west bank. Years following, they gave up Gaza. They did so on conditions that the Palestinians would be at peace.
That didn't work out to well.
Israel should never have given up what somebody else lost.


As an added note: We think of 911 as a one time, one day event. In Israel, 911 is an every day event.

[randolph]

Originally Posted by franalexes

In 1967 Israel was attacked on three fronts. Israel kicked ass and won Gaza, Golan heights and the west bank. Years following, they gave up Gaza. They did so on conditions that the Palestinians would be at peace.
That didn't work out to well.
Israel should never have given up what somebody else lost.

Israel could have easily taken over all of Palestine but what to do with all the Muslims. Well, - ahem - make them convert to the Jewish religion! This is what the Muslims did as they occupied much of the near east. Historically most Muslims did not become Muslims by choice, it was forced upon them.

[smc]

I promise to give a substantive answer to ila's long post above as soon as I am past the current oppression of a huge research grant deadline.

[randolph]

In many parts of the world, as Ila points out, people move from one place to another, occupying other peoples land. Usually, the occupier merges with the occupied. The Spanish merged with the Aztecs and other groups in the new world. When the Jews took over a part of Palestine, they did not do this, they did not merge into the existing population. Most of the existing population was expelled. The surrounding countries would not accomodate them, consequently they, the Palestinians, became refugees. The Nazis purged Germany of Jews and other ethnic groups and the Israelis have done much the same thing, purging Israel's lands of non Jews.
It is very problematic that the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust would have been willing to accomodate the Muslims residing in the lands taken over by the Jewish refugees.
Peoples of radically different religious beliefs can live in harmony together as long as an agitator does not inflame intolerance in one group. The US, Europe and Indonesia are some examples.
We will never know whether the Jews and the Muslims could have lived in harmony in a Palestinian state.
I think it can be shown historically that when groups mix together, a synergy is produced that makes the population innovative and dynamic. Look at the US and Canada for example. Of course Muslims and Jews can never mix together, or could they?

[smc]

Originally Posted by ila

So just where should the Israelis live, smc? They are on their ancestral land. The house of Israel and descendants have lived in the area of Israel for millennia. Even when the people of the twelve tribes of Israel were dispersed throughout the world there were still Israelis living in the area we now call Israel. The Arabs and the Israelis trace a common ancestry back to Abraham who, it is supposed, lived in the area of Israel. ...

As promised:

ila raises some good points. Let me begin by defining what I mean by a "colonial-settler state."

Not all colonialism is settler colonialism. For instance, Britain colonized a large part of the world to exploit natural and human resources. Under this type of colonialism, administrators and armed forces (and their families) make up the bulk of the non-native peoples in the colony. Settlement by large numbers of people from the colonizer country is neither encouraged nor typical.

Settler colonialism, though, is about land irrespective of the natural and human resources. Settler families move in. They reproduce. They are sometimes backed up by some imperial power, either directly or indirectly, for a time. Over time, the colonization includes direct or indirect depopulation of the previous inhabitants. This may happen through expulsion, wholesale killing, or (least likely) an accelerated birthrate by the colonizers over time. As historian Patrick Wolfe has put it ?settler colonialism destroys to replace.?

Also over time, the settler population establishes its own colonizing authority.

Now, on to Israel.

In the late 19th century, a political movement called Zionism emerged as a response to anti-Semitism, particularly in Eastern Europe. The Zionists concluded that anti-Semitism could not be eliminated, and began to advocate Jewish emigration to an exclusively Jewish state that would be set up somewhere, anywhere. Theodor Herzl, acknowledged as Zionism?s founder, called in an 1896 pamphlet for a Jewish state to be set up in an undeveloped country outside Europe. He also stated explicitly that this couldn?t happen unless one of the major imperialist powers backed the Zionists. After all, they were busy carving up the world for themselves. Herzl posited that if such support could be found, the Zionist movement would conduct itself like other colonizing ventures.

By the way, the Zionists openly considered a big part of Argentina, Madagascar, and Uganda as places for the new Jewish state. These places have absolutely no connection to Judaism or the ?house of Israel? (to use ila?s term). Some religious Jews suggested Palestine, the so-called Biblical ?promised land.?

By the way, it should be pointed out that the overwhelming majority of Orthodox Jews, prior to Israel?s founding, opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in the so-called ?promised land.? This was seen as a direct affront to God, who had made a covenant with Abraham and promised that the Jews would be returned to that place by a Messiah. The establishment of a Jewish state there by men was counter to a central tenet of Judaism.

Back to Herzl. He wrote about Palestine becoming a Jewish state that it would form ?a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.? Already, the Zionists were situating their ideas in the context of a system of colonial domination, and referring to the indigenous people of Palestine as barbarians.

Once Palestine was chosen, the Zionist movement attempted to persuade one of the imperialist powers to support the colonization. They approach Turkey and Germany, but were turned down. (Yes, Germany!). The Zionists didn?t care who they allied with. Herzl approached Count Von Plehve, sponsor of the worst anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia. He wrote to him, ?Help me to reach the land sooner and the revolt [against Czarist rule] will end.? Herzl and other Zionist leaders offered to help guarantee Czarist interests in Palestine and to rid Eastern Europe and Russia of those ?noxious and subversive Anarcho-Bolshevik Jews.? In other words, the Zionists would help the Czarists get rid of people who wanted to fight anti-Semitism. Von Plehve saw an opportunity, writing: ?The Jews have been joining the revolutionary parties. We were sympathetic to your Zionist movement as long as it worked toward emigration. You don?t have to justify the movement to me. You are preaching to a convert.?

Britain took control of Palestine at the end of World War I, so the Zionists turned their lobbying to the British government. Chaim Weizmann argued, ?A Jewish Palestine would be a safeguard to England, in particular in respect to the Suez Canal.? You see how the Jewish state project begins to have less and less to do with anti-Semitism and more and more to do with traditional colonial interests?

On November 2, 1917, Lord Balfour, the British foreign minister Lord Balfour and a notorious anti-Semite, issued the following declaration: ?His Majesty?s Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. ...?

Notably, one of the people who played a very important role in convincing Balfour to make this declaration was General Jan Smuts, the South African delegate to the British war cabinet. Smuts, who later became South Africa?s prime minister (he?s the one who cracked down on Gandhi when he was in South Africa) was a friend of Weizmann?s; the latter often compared the Zionist?s aims in Palestine with the South African idea of creating a racially distinct colonizing population ... and all that entailed. It?s no wonder that later on, when South Africa became an international pariah, the only country that would openly sell arms to the South Africa government and that would invite its athletes to participate in events was Israel!

How did the Zionists create the Israel of today? Small Jewish settlements had existed in Palestine from the late 19th century, but after 1917 the colonization process accelerated considerably. Jewish organizations bought up large areas of land from absentee landlords, displacing large numbers of Palestinian peasants. The Zionists also began to construct an exclusively Jewish ?enclave? economy, organized around the Histadrut, the ?General Confederation of Hebrew Workers? in Palestine. Settlers would refuse to employ Arab labor and they boycotted Arab goods, seeking to destroy Palestinian Arab livelihood in the region.

Then came the 1930s. Fascism was on the rise in Europe. Most Jews didn?t want to leave Europe for Palestine, but the Zionists worked over time to get their colonial power sponsors to encourage such migration. Of all Jewish migrants from Europe in the 1930s, only about 8.5 percent went to Palestine. That number was likely accomplished only because the United States and Britain enacted immigration policies that kept a lot of Jews out, and then encouraged Palestine as an alternative.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

[smc]

Continued:

I want to make a very important point. Zionism and Judaism are not the same. In my opinion, Zionism is actually the primary creator of anti-Semitism in the world today, though, by having successfully created the illusion in the minds of most people that they are the same. I will explain in a moment. First, some facts.

Israel?s founding is justified as a response to the horrors of the Nazi holocaust against the Jews. But here?s a fact: the Zionists frequently collaborated with fascism. In 1933, the Zionist Federation of Germany sent the Nazi Party a memorandum of support that read, in part: ?On the foundation of the new [Nazi] state which has established the principle of race, we wish to fit our community into the total structure so that for us, too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible.?

One could argue that this was a survival move, but the truth is that while Jews fought the Nazis in underground armies and in the Warsaw Ghetto over the next years, Zionists did not.

Also in 1933, the congress of the World Zionist Organization defeated a resolution for action against Hitler. The vote was 240 to 43.

Joseph Goebbels wrote several articles praising Zionism. The Nazis funded some Zionist leaders. In 1937, a member of the Haganah, a Zionist militia in Palestine, delivered the following message to the German SS: ?Jewish nationalist circles ... were very pleased with the radical German policy, since the strength of the Jewish population in Palestine would be so far increased thereby that in the foreseeable future the Jews could reckon upon numerical superiority over the Arabs.?

The Zionist movement in the United States, and Britain openly opposed changes in the immigration laws that would have permitted more Jews to find refuge in those countries. The rationale? The fewer other places Jews could flee to, the more likely they would go to Palestine. If more Jews died in the process, so what! In 1938, future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion wrote: ?If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael [greater Israel], then I would opt for the second alternative.?

As Jewish organizations in Western Europe and the United States in the late 1930s and early 1940s cried out for help, for public campaigns, for organized resistance, for demonstrations to force the hand of the allied governments to stem the tide of Hitler?s Jewish extermination (which the West was aware of), the Zionists were silent. They sabotaged efforts to save Jews from Hitler. They did not want to rock the boat of the countries that supported converting Palestine to a colonial-settler state for Jews.

Meanwhile, the British colonial regime gave Jews in Palestine privileged status over the indigenous Palestinian Arabs. Jewish capital got 90 percent of all economic concessions. Jews were paid higher wages than Arabs for equal work. This had begun in the 1920s. The British used Jewish settlers to help suppress mass demonstrations by Arabs against landlessness (sales of their homes by absentee landlords, and forced expulsions) and unemployment. From 1936 to 1939, there was a sustained Palestinian uprising, including a general strike that lasted several months. The British relied on Zionist militias to execute leaders and help round up thousands for imprisonment. Thousands of Arab homes were physically demolished, and then the Zionists would step in and stake a ?claim? to the then-unoccupied land.

After World War II, the Brits had to leave Palestine; the UK was tremendously weakened by the war. The other leading powers, including the United States and the Soviet Union, decided to partition the country into separate Jewish and Palestinian section. The Jews at the time were 31 percent of the population; they were given 54 percent of the fertile land. But the Zionist acceptance of this was just to play along, and those who sponsored them knew it. Ben-Gurion had written, in 1938: ?The boundaries of Zionist aspiration include southern Lebanon, southern Syria, today?s Jordan, all of Cis-Jordan [the West Bank] and the Sinai. .... After we become a strong force as the result of the creation of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine. The state will only be a stage in the realization of Zionism and its task is to prepare the ground for our expansion. The state will have to preserve order ... with machine guns.

Well, how do you accomplish that? You?d have to expel the Arabs, by force if necessary. Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency?s Colonization Department, wrote in 1940: ?There is no room for both peoples together in this country ... We shall not achieve our goal of being an independent people with the Arabs in this small country ... And there is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries. To transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe should be left.

The ?Koenig Report,? a Zionist document of the time, was even more direct: ?We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.?

I ask ila, in the context of what he wrote, do the Arabs, who also trace the ?common ancestry back to Abraham,? have any claim on the land of Palestine?

[TO BE CONTINUED]

[smc]

Continued:

Even if none of what I wrote about the Zionists and what they did in Palestine up to and including the World War II period were true, what they did after the war, particularly beginning in late 1947 and especially in 1948, would be enough to characterize the Zionist state as illegitimate. Then, Zionist forces seized three-quarters of the land and expelled close to 1 million Palestinians. Paramilitary groups such as the Irgun and the Haganah carried out massacres. I personally have Palestinian friends whose parents and grandparents were awakened in the middle of the night by Zionists soldiers and forced, at gun point, to flee their homes. One of my friends carries the key to her family?s house around her neck; the house is still there, just outside Hebron (in the West Bank), lived in since 1948 by the same Zionist family.

By the way, future Israeli prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were leaders of these paramilitary groups, which were as much terrorist groups as anything the West typically reserves that term for today.

Massacres, you may ask. Yes, indeed. There was a famous one in the small Palestinian Arab village of Deir Yassin. Menachem Begin was there to help murder 254 men, women, and children, and steal their land. Later, Begin wrote, in celebration of what had been accomplished: ?All in the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter. The Arabs began fleeing in panic, shouting ?Deir Yassin?.?

The official Israeli Defense Forces carried out other massacres. About Dueima, another Palestinian Arab village, an IDF soldier actually wrote about what he was an eyewitness to (and later regretted): ?They killed between eighty to one hundred Arab men, women and children. To kill the children they fractured their heads with sticks. There was not one home without corpses. ... Educated and well-mannered commanders who were considered ?good guys? ... became base murderers, and this not in the storm of battle, but as a method of expulsion and extermination.?

Close to 500 Palestinian villages existed in the territory that came under Israeli occupation after partition in 1947. During 1948 and 1949, nearly 400 of them were razed to the ground. More were destroyed in the 1950s. In 1969, Moshe Dayan, former chief of staff and minister of defense, summarized: ?We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs, and we are building here a Hebrew, Jewish state. Instead of Arab villages, Jewish villages were established ... There is not a single [Jewish] settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab village.?

So, Israel was established with massacres and land grabs. What about the old story that the Zionists had no choice because the survival of the new state was threatened by hostile Arab neighbors? It?s true that there were some military clashes with neighboring countries in 1948, as those countries took small (and largely fruitless actions) meant to look as if they were defending the Palestinians. The rulers of those countries saw an opportunity: the existence of a colonial-settler state in the midst of the Arab world would divert the attention of the Arab masses away from their oppressors in their own countries -- that is, the ruling despots. That would serve the despots interests, which is why the key Arab governments accepted Israel?s founding and were already in negotiation with the new Israeli government.

The ?security? argument for Israel?s continued land grabs has always been a fraud. Moshe Sharett, an Israeli prime minister in the 1950s, wrote as much in his memoirs. He states that the Zionist political and military leadership never believed in any Arab danger to Israel, but that Israel deliberately tried to maneuver and force the Arab states into military confrontations the Israelis were certain the Zionists could precisely so that Israel could destabilize Arab regimes and occupy more territory. Sharrett wrote that Israel?s aim has always been to ?dismember the Arab world, defeat the Arab national movement and create puppet regimes under regional Israeli power? and ?to modify the balance of power in the region radically, transforming Israel into the major power in the Middle East.?

So much for a protective homeland for Jews fleeing anti-Semitism. This, though, explains why the United States backs Israel with more foreign aid than any other country. An Israel that does what Sharett explains serves the interests of the U.S. rulers tremendously. If they have to couch their support for Israel in the language of fighting anti-Semitism, that?s fine.

Before 1947, Jews owned about 6 percent of the land in Palestine. In the process of establishing the State of Israel, the Zionists expropriated 90 percent of the land, the vast majority of which formerly belonged to Arabs. They emptied whole cities of their Palestinian Arab population. They seized factories, rolling stock, orchards, and houses. This is, and continues to be, ethnic cleansing.

Then, to bolster the population, Israel established the ?The Law of Return.? I am a Jew, born in the United States. I am an American citizen. Yet, I can get on a plane to Tel Aviv tomorrow and declare myself an Israeli citizen, a citizen of a land to which I have no claim and no connection other than a supposed Biblical one. My friend Lana, the woman who wears the key around her neck (see above), is also an American citizen. She was born of Palestinian parents who fled to the United States from a refugee camp. Her family are Christians; there are quite a few Christian Palestinian Arabs. Were she to fly with me, she would get off in Tel Aviv and have no such right to claim her citizenship. When she visits her family still in the West Bank, she has to avoid Israel altogether, entering via Jordan and then enduring checkpoint after checkpoint after checkpoint, and humiliation after humiliation after humiliation.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

[ila]

Originally Posted by smc

Continued:

...I ask ila, in the context of what he wrote, do the Arabs, who also trace the ?common ancestry back to Abraham,? have any claim on the land of Palestine?

[TO BE CONTINUED]

smc, there are too many posts to reply properly to everything you written so I am only quoting one part of one post, but will reply in general to what you have written.

One can support the presence of Israel and Judaism without supporting Zionism.

To answer the quote, yes, the arabs do have a claim to the land where Israel exists. To properly understand the whole situation one must delve into the history of that area. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah existed from approximately 900 BC. Before that there were the areas of the twelve tribes of Israel which occupied the land from approximately modern day Lebanon and Syria where they border modern day Israel south to the Sinai and east into modern Jordan.

If one believes the Bible then the Jews occupied part of this area before going to Egypt and then returning after the exodus from Egypt. In the meantime Canaanites, Moabites, and Edomites (to name just three peoples) occupied the area and were still there when the Israelites returned (and probably there when the Israelites first lived in the area. It should also be noted that Israel and Judah were not homogenously Jewish.

The Canaanites, Moabites, and Israelites are Semitic people and spoke Semitic languages. It is quite possible that the arabs (Palestinians) are descendants of the Moabites, the Canaanite, and the Edomites as well as others. Note that I have no evidence for the preceding statement. It is purely a guess on my part as the Moabites are direct descendants of Abraham through Lot and his son Moab. As well Palestinians are a Semitic people and Arabic is a Semitic language. Therefore because all these people lived in the area then the Jews and the Palestinians have a claim to the land where Israel currently exists.

There is a theory that there was no exodus of Jews from Egypt, but rather that the Jews were always in the area of Israel and eventually differentiated themselves from others living in the area mainly through the belief in one god, Yaweh.

smc, I have a lot more to add so if we are going to continue this discussion it should be in a separate thread as we are coming close to completely derailing randolph?s original intent. Or better yet we should continue this discussion in person sharing a bottle of Jameson?s and indulging in some good draught beer.