Jimmy Carter, Gaza and me (Discussion 2)

On May 14, 2015 I posted a commentary based on an exchange of letters to the Editor of the North Jersey newspaper, The Record. I urge you to re-read it. It appeared under the title "Jimmy Carter, Gaza and me!" On May 19, I posted comments which I had received from two of my readers. You can find those under the heading "Jimmy Carter, Gaza and me! (Discussion)." 

The first supported my view and did not call for a rebuttal but the second, from Albert Nekimken did. You may want to particularly re-read Nekimken observations.

Below you will find that rebuttal:

I  find my self at a loss as to how to respond to constantly unsourced and unsupported allegations. 

I particularly point to your holding onto the totally discredited and debunked claim that there are no Palestinians. We wave a magic wand, people disappear, and so there is no problem.

You write:

Worth noting, anyone who would who would honor a despicable terrorist in this way has disqualified himself from any further rational consideration.

I don’t know whether this is a quote and if so from whom and why it is set out here.

I don’t know what your views were (are) about all the Israeli terrorists who were instrumental in creating the State of Israel, and who eventually formed the Herut party, the predecessor of Likud. But I guess they were "good terrorists”, not to speak of the Irish Republican army, which so many Americans actively supported. But what is a little inconsistency between friends?

But before I truly launch into your “presentation”, I have to express my shock at your response earlier to my sending you an article from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, entitled: "Thousands of Israeli Holocaust survivors still living in poverty.” It seems to me that nothing can be more damming to a Nation founded on the basis that Holocaust survivors need a refuge, if it can’t even take care of this dwindling group. Where is its moral compass?

Your response was:

The situation of poverty and neglect among Holocaust survivors is a simple scandal that must be remedied, and should have been remedied many years ago. Who exactly is to blame, I couldn't say.

But who is to blame, - is it not enough to agree that Israel or its government, which is the same thing, is to blame. You suggested "Netanyahu’s tenure as finance minister is to blame when he turned the Israeli economy toward the free market” or at least that the newspaper Haaretz makes that claim. But isn't it obvious that there is money for the settler movement; there is money for the Haredim; but there is no money for Holocaust survivors. What an indictment of the values of the people who govern Israel.

And there are many decent Israeli’s who would not agree with you or the policies of its government. Unfortunately, they appear to be in a minority.

I am responding further to your message by interlineating my comments into your text in red.

Worth noting, anyone who would who would honor a despicable terrorist in this way has disqualified himself from any further rational consideration.

 Earlier in the day, Carter, 90, visited Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and laid a wreath on the grave of former leader Yasser Arafat. 

 The writer asks: (This refers to the Letter to the Editor to which I responded)  "Has he [Carter] ever asked where the billions of dollars sent in aid to the governments in Gaza have gone?"

I am now quoting Nekimken with all my comments appearing in Red. 

You (this refers to me) wrote “Just about a month ago, on April 13, the Jerusalem Post had this headline: ‘International donors fail to deliver promised aid to Gaza.’ And besides, the Israeli blockade makes it all but impossible for building materials to be delivered.”

 Your reply ignores several cogent points, including:

Israel has intercepted bags of cash provided by Iran entering the Gaza Strip to pay Hamas employees Source please!, without which support for Hamas would likely collapse. and if Hamas collapsed, would Israel then re-occupy or would they turn it over to the hated P.L.O.?

2. Europe and the EU have supplied the PA with billions of dollars over recent decades. Source please! 

It is entirely the fault of Hamas (why? how?) that whatever is left of this money after the huge amounts siphoned off by corrupt Fatah officials Source please  has not been transferred to the Gaza Strip.

3. Israel has, in fact, permitted the import of some building materials, Source please but must attempt to prevent them  from being diverted How? (as they had been in the past) to building tunnels that Hamas used to attack Israel. I thought Israel was attacked with rockets! Israel’s blockade under International Law is the continuance of war. Why does it have to be asymmetrical?  Israel wages war - good war! Hamas fights back - bad terror!!! Has Israel tried to negotiate peace with Hamas. NO!!! It is terrorist organization. Resistance bad – terror! Weren’t resistance fighters against the Nazis terrorists? 

You (Emil Scheller) wrote:

Why should an oppressed people give recognition to their oppressors? The PLO has recognized Israel's right to exist and what has it gotten in return?

The answer:

"Because after multiple wars intended to obliterate Israel, the Palestinians have lost. Now it is time to reconcile and build for the future." Their "oppression" could have been ended long ago if not for the cynical manipulation of Palestinians by their own leaders and for their own enrichment. The PLO's "acceptance" of Israel is/was meaningless so long as the PA, which is the titular Palestinian government refuses to acknowledge Israel's status as a Jewish state

This is a new requirement intended to keep raising the bar.

or, more properly, a state for the Jewish people. To avoid doing so reflects their continuing desire to transform the Jewish state into an Arab Palestinian state, which exposes "acceptance" as a mere tactic for foreign consumption.

(It implies that if Palestinians should become a majority, they would be denied their rights as citizens, and at the least makes them less than citizens. This was never a requirement in all the years since the State of Israel was founded in 1948. Why now? What would be your reaction to a proposal that the US should be declared a Christian nation?

More to the point, so long as suicide bombers infiltrate from the West Bank (thwarted only by the security wall) and rockets fly from Gaza, "acceptance" remains a hollow joke. What did "acceptance" get the PLO? Nothing, because there was no real acceptance and  because the only thing they can hope to get is peace, which is the most precious element for people who love life.

Peace under occupation is not peace!!!! Did the French, the Dutch, the Poles, etc. have peace under the Nazis? Or even the people in the colonies of Britain or of the Dutch, etc. They demanded statehood and until they got it there could be no peace.

AS for Israel's democracy and a vote for Palestinians, Caroline Glick believes that, after Israel annexes the West Bank, all Arabs who wish to become full Israeli citizens should be offered a path to citizenship. She offers compelling evidence that the risk is worth taking for both sides. Unfortunately, this solution has not attracted much interest anywhere so far as I can tell. The alternative is a demilitarized Palestinian "state" with limited scope of action.

You and I and the whole world knows that this is still more of the creation of a Vichy style government.

Now, you will ask "Why does Israel (the oppressor) have the right to dictate terms to the Palestinians (as the oppressed)?" The answer is obvious: because Israel is determined to safeguard its people and its national existence based on residence in its own territory and, as noted previously, its "rights" have been paid for in blood through several wars-if not millennia.

I guess what you are saying that since Jews have suffered through millennia, they are not bound by any moral compass that might apply to others.

Mere residence in a territory does not automatically create a "right" to political sovereignty. (Ask the Kurds who have lived in place for a thousand years without independent sovereignty.)

Indeed, and I would, as I trust you would, support their aspirations for their independence. All the colonial peoples, from India to Algeria, to Indonesia, have won their sovereignty. Were you opposed to their aspirations? 

And, as noted in prior comments, because the population of Jordan is at least 60% Palestinian, it is the de facto Palestinian state, whether anyone wants to recognize it as such, or not.

As for whether or not Israel is a democracy, let the kettle not call the pot black. Every democracy in the world, including the U.S., is a work in progress. Israel has made admirable progress in a few short decades, even if there is more to be done.

 Unfortunately, Israel has not made progress, it is going backwards.

Comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office.

  

I AM A JEW (PART XXVII - Discussion 3)

As the title shows this is the 27rd part (actually the 28^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on Part I and then scrolling upwards or by accessing the label I Am A Jew.

As I said In my previous post: “My colleague, Albert Nekimken, of Vienna, Virginian, a staunch defender of Israeli policies, has agreed to present the Israeli viewpoint chapter by chapter, and I will share his comments with you together with my rebuttals.

In my previous post I shared with the reader his comments on my post "I AM A JEW (PART I)" and offered my rebuttals. Now I come to "I AM A JEW (Part II)," in which I started the post by publishing some comments from readers. Nekimken first addresses those.

He addresses George Garver’s criticism of me for taking pride in my ethnicity and writes:

In my opinion, there is no need for you to defend either your sense of pride in the achievements of Jews, or your sense of despair when they fail to fulfill your moral expectations. Both are quite understandable.

Hal Wolkoff of Montclair, NJ, expressed some views which space will not allow me to replicate (See the post) to which Nekimken expresses substantial agreement saying:

Hal’s point here is well taken. I can find no reason why having a profound sympathy for, and understanding of, the situation of the Palestinian people should require us to blame Zionism and Israel wholesale for their suffering. Even a cursory reading of history of the conflict since the early 20^th century reveals Palestinian Arabs to have been the victims of duplicitous, inept and corrupt leaders who wasted no opportunity to promote their own interests at the expense of “the people” whom they professed to represent.

 Hal rightly identifies Palestinian rejection of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state because to do so would undermine a primary reason for opposing Israel, i.e., its “alien” nature. PM Netanyahu has been criticized as obstructionist for insisting on this point in peace negotiations with the PA. Yet, without it Israel would have no way to defend the essence, the raison d’être of Zionism itself and no way to reject peace plans that put it in jeopardy.

 Liberal Western Jews who complain that states identified by a religion are an anachronism in the modern world only need to look at the neighborhood: virtually ALL Arab states (and Iran) today describe themselves as some version of an “Islamic republic.” (ISIS in Syria and Iraq has even dropped the fig leaf of “republic” in its aspirations for a restored Caliphate.)

Having already responded to Hal Wolkoff, I will confine my remarks to Nekimken’s assertion. Let me start with Nekimken’s last paragraph first. He appears to be denying that “that states identified by a religion are an anachronism” by pointing out that most states in the Middle East  “describe themselves as some version of an “Islamic Republic”. Here he sets up a straw man, for I never made such an assertion and secondly I would be the first to recognized that not only are states defined by religion and even religious laws in the Middle East, but many states in the Far East are.

That is hardly an argument for Israel being one. But I have made clear that I believe Israel should be a Jewish State, in so far as it follows policies that would keep a Jewish majority by its immigration policies, and by denying the Right of Return to Israel proper. I do, however, strongly object to it being a theocracy, regardless what other states in the region, or in the rest of world are.

---------------------------------

Nekimken then address the substantive part of my post, which I urge the reader to read or re-read since without a point of reference it is difficult to follow the train of thought.

Nekimken writes:

Here you omit the not-so-unimportant fact that Israel’s declaration of independence was followed immediately by the expulsion of Jews from all Arab countries where they had been living for millennia. Together with the in-gathering of Jews from Ethiopia, Iran and elsewhere, over a period of a few decades,

I don’t think it is relevant, except as a way to sow hatred. In any case the Palestinians had no part in it.

Israel’s demography shifted from Western-oriented Ashkenazi to Sephardic. The Sephardic Jews (and later, the Russian immigrants) had no experience with Social Democrat politics and eventually they formed their own parties, which resulted in the Likud coalition today, as you describe. Subsequently, support for the Labor Party plummeted.

Absolutely true and a tragedy! They had no experience with any kind of Democracy, and they brought only Right Wing philosophy and hatred. It transformed Israel.

Your reference to Jews who were living in “peace and prosperity for generations in Arab lands” represents a gross distortion of the truth. Whatever “peace and prosperity” they were able to enjoy was temporary and subject to tragic deterioration from day to day.

Suffice it to say, they were better off than in most Christian lands. That is why they chose to live there. But it is not really relevant to our dilemma today.

Curiously, you cite “three factions,” but only name two: the Haganah and the Irgun. In fact, Haganah was not a political “faction,“

I disagree! It was the backbone of the group that formed the initial government and early subsequent governments. It was the foundation of the Labor party!

but rather the institutional militia organized overtly by the Zionist leadership. The third defensive element was the Palmach, which was an informal (at times covert) village defense organization that was merged with Haganah to form the Israel Defense Forces after independence. Its defense of Jewish settlements was critically important. Your decision to follow your description of clashes between the Haganah and the Irgun with the so-called Deir Yassin “massacre” and reference to “ethnic cleansing” was not “instructive” in the way that you intended. Here you use it as prima facie evidence for Zionist crimes.

No, that is the point! It was not Zionist crimes! It was the crimes of a faction, which unfortunately has now become the dominant faction in Israeli politics.

While no one denies the incident, it has been used egregiously by anti-Zionists and Arab propagandists. An entire chapter was devoted to the incident in Ari Shavitz’ recent book, “My Promised Land”. The chapter was republished in a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine. See here and for a critique see here. Suffice to say that your summary account here fuels a series of unwarranted interpretations. Whatever happened, and without minimizing the gravity of the tragedy,

A massacre is a tragedy, but not every tragedy is a massacre. Nekimken’s use of the term “tragedy” tries to deflect blame. And we have not even begun to discuss other massacres such as Lydda.

the incident was NOT an example of “ethnic cleansing,”

Many, if not most, would disagree! It resulted not only in the expulsion, and to a large extent the murder of its citizens, but more important caused a panic among the Palestinian population causing many of them to flee. The fact that many remained does not change this fact. The horror of the act is exemplified by the fact that the Haganah apologized for it.

Villagers were relocated a few miles away. These Arab deaths in no way reflected a Zionist

Nekimken talks about Zionist, as though it was a united group. The atrocities were committed by a faction, which, unfortunately, is now the ruling faction.

desire to eradicate Arabs from the land entirely, merely—as you indicate—the need to secure a pivotal defensive position under conditions of war. Twenty per cent of Israel’s population comprises Arabs who remained in place. Despite some wild talk recently, there has never been any effort to expel Arab citizens and “cleanse” the Jewish state of Muslims or Christians.

Absolutely true!! But as I have indicated the Arab population, like the American descendants of slaves, are discriminated against as a group, and have neither real political power, nor are their towns given the same resources as Jewish towns.

Although the idea never took hold for a variety of reasons, during earlier periods it remained an open question why Jordan should not be considered the much-discussed “Palestinian state.” The majority of its population is commonly identified as “Palestinian” in distinction from the Bedouin communities that form the anchor of the Hashemite monarchy that rules Jordan. Yasir Arafat did his people no favor when he attempted to overthrow the monarchy and was defeated in the Black September 1970 coup attempt.

This may, or may not, be true, but its relevance escapes me.

As described earlier, Britain created Jordan precisely as a remedy to the perceived unfairness of the Balfour Declaration that had awarded ALL of the Palestine Mandate to the Zionists. Why that effort failed became part and parcel of the over-arching Arab effort to eliminate Israel entirely.

 Of course there is a difference, as suggested above. Likud’s claim on the West Bank and Gaza was based on historical precedent: the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent establishment of the Palestine Mandate. The British negotiated with a Zionist leadership that more or less democratically represented the global Jewish community.

The characterization here of the establishment of Israel as illegal because it was “contrary to the wish of the Palestine people” etc. and violated their right to self-determination is nonsense.

Some of these comments amaze me! Where did I ever assert, allege, or suggest, that the establishment of Israel was illegal?

In 1947 there was no “Palestinian people” and Israel’s independence was validated by the UN.

Of course, there were Palestinian people. People who live or lived in Palestine, by definition are Palestinian people. This constant repetition of this offensive nonsense, is just that – offensive. As for Israel’s independence being validated by the UN, simply cries out for the validation by the UN of a Palestinian state. Israel was not created out of negotiations with its Arab neighbors. Why must a Palestinian State come about only out of negotiation with Israel? Why is Israel entitled to a veto?

The British creation of Jordan was precisely intended to provide a location for a new Arab “homeland” similar to the creation of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

True, but it overlooked that the Palestinians, west of the Jordan river, did not want to be ruled by the monarch chosen by the colonial powers.

Arafat’s statement referenced here after a meeting with “five prominent Jews” was never more than a tactic intended to further the continuing effort to eradicate Israel. Acts of terrorism never abated.
 Hamas was created by the Muslim Brotherhood explicitly as a terrorist organization for the purpose of destroying Israel and ejecting all Jews from the region. In what sense can it be a partner for negotiation?

One doesn’t negotiate with friends. One negotiates with enemies. Israel has never offered to recognize a Palestinian State, with the characteristics of sovereignty, contiguous, including a link to Gaza, with East Jerusalem (the Part that was never part of Jerusalem and is inhabited by Palestinians) as its capital and with the Right of Return to the new Palestinian State. Instead it has shown bad faith in all negotiations, by annexing Palestinian territory, as it ostensibly negotiates. Sincere negotiations require that the status quo (if not the status quo ante) be maintained during negotiations.

Your claim that the PLO accepted Israel’s right to exist never materialized during negotiations and was, in any case, superseded by Hamas, which made no such concession.

Since it wasn’t included in the negotiations, why would it make, or offer, any concessions. What concessions were offered to it?

Your reference to “self-determination” conveniently omits the right of the Jewish people to the same goal. 

These constant straw men become tiresome! Who is denying the Jewish people self-determination?

The reference to “Israel’s endless encroachment on Palestinian territory” includes the implied assumption that some kind of Palestinian Arab political entity existed whose land Israel was “annexing” and “encroaching.” Yet, at no point in history has there ever been any such entity.

Another straw man! What has a political entity to do with it? People live in a part of Palestine who do not wish to live under Israeli rule. The attempt to impose such rule on them in the territory in which they live is annexing their land. What can be plainer! Israel’s de jure right is actually only what the UN granted them, the 1948 border. The 1967 border can only be claimed by right of conquest, a poor reed to lean upon.

The military ceasefire lines after the war resulting from Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948 never demarcated any political border. Recall that it was Jordan that annexed the West Bank in 1950 and, during the period from 1948 to 1967—when there were no Israeli settlements or presence of any kind—there was no attempt whatsoever to establish a Palestinian state. Nor was there any effort under the Egyptian occupation of Gaza during the same period to establish any kind of “Palestinian” entity there. An argument could easily be made that Jordan’s annexation was illegal and, after 1967, the West Bank merely returned to Israel as part of the state declared in 1948.

A rather strange assertion, since “the state declared in 1948” had the 1948 borders.

Apart from Jordan, Arab governments everywhere kept Palestinian “refugees” in wretched camps without passports and supported at great expense by UNRWA.

Exactly! Showing that Nekimken’s claim of a “larger pan-Arab, Muslim “umma” is nonsense. Arabs in their own countries have no allegiance to Arabs who are of another tribe or another ethnicity.

During the same period, Israel successfully absorbed more than 700,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries,

Yes, that was the raison d'être for the creation of Israel.

a number roughly equal to the Arabs who left the new state of Israel.

A strong indication that they were too terrified to stay.

As for Israel turning the P.L.O. into a “Vichy government”, the claim is ludicrous since it was, in fact, Israel that facilitated the PLO’s return to the West Bank from Tunis (after it was chased out of Lebanon) in order to set up the Palestinian Authority as envisioned by the U.S.-brokered Oslo, peace negotiations. Had Israel not agreed to do this, the comparison with Vichy France might have some relevance. 

It is precisely because Israel agreed to do this that shows they were creating an entity to keep order on its behalf and if they don’t behave Israel punishes then, as they are now doing, by withholding taxes collected from Palestinians, ostensibly on behalf of the P.L.O.

Regarding the P.L.O or PA being characterized by Israel as “too weak” to be a partner in peace, we see today that the recent, much applauded “unity” government announced a short time ago between the PA and Hamas is already unraveling. Hamas only agreed to the deal because Egypt had closed the Gaza border and it was unable to pay either civil servant or “freedom fighter” salaries; it needed financial relief. The rocket attacks and publicity that followed presumably attracted new funds and made the PA deal superfluous.

Hamas is popular because it represents resistance to Israeli oppression, or as one Palestinian resident of Gaza was recently quoted as saying: “I would rather die quickly than to be slowly strangled by Israel.”

As to negotiations - The view of both Israel and Hamas is that there is nothing to negotiate. Each side wants to eliminate the other. Primarily American and European Liberals continue to believe in negotiations.

Since Nekimken has for many years described himself as a liberal, I would think he would be part of that group. As I have said, since the assassination of Rabin, and certainly since the advent of Netanyahu, all of Israel’s pretense at negotiations, has been just that – pretense.

The American political climate makes the right solution difficult, if not impossible. Peace will not come by negotiations, because Israel is intent on conquering the whole West Bank and has no interest in negotiations.

The U.S. has the capacity, if it had the political will, to impose a solution. It is in the interests of the U.S., of Israel, and of the Palestinians for it to do so. Mediation must end! Arbitration must begin! Further settlement activity must stop immediately, or sanctions must be imposed.

I regret the length of this post, but an adequate airing of Nekimken’s views and my rebuttals necessitated that.

I will not entertain comments at this time, since Nekimken has more to say, and I have to respond.

I AM A JEW (PART XXVI - Discussion 2)

As the title shows this is the 26rd part (actually the 27^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on Part I and then scrolling upwards or by accessing the label I Am A Jew.

My colleague, Albert Nekimken, of Vienna, Virginia, a staunch defender of Israeli policies, has agreed to present the Israeli viewpoint chapter by chapter, and I will share his comments with you together with my rebuttals.

Please read or reread my post "I AM A JEW (PART I)." Nekimken’s counter-views follow in italics together with my rebuttals paragraph by paragraph.

While valuable as a way to personalize our dialogue with readers, being a Jew is quite irrelevant to our understanding of the subject. Men can be feminists and Christians or Hindus can be Zionists, especially when there are non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews (some informed, some not).

While I share your inability to embrace fully Judaism as a religion, we should be honest and admit that “cultural” Jews will not ensure the survival either of the Jewish people or Israel. We must depend on traditional religious Jews for both goals.

Here I must immediately disagree! In my personal experience, (and I know of no meaningful study of the subject) it is precisely “cultural Jews” who assure the survival of the Jewish people as an entity. In my own family, my wife was born Christian and never converted. It was religious Jews who tried to deny my daughter’s Jewish identity on the ground that her mother was not of the faith. Yet she married a culturally Jewish man, they observe a Kosher home as a matter of tradition, and even light candles to usher in the Sabbath, all as a matter of tradition.

It used to be argued that inter-marriage was the greatest threat facing the existence of Jews as a people and as a religion. It has proven itself to be wrong.

Pages, possibly books, could be written on this subject, and probably have been, but this is not the place for it.

The background that you outline here strikes me as having minimal relevance to the topic at hand. It is more important to note that Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran and, in Muslim tradition, it holds third place in importance after Mecca and Medina. In contrast, for Jews Jerusalem in particular and Zion in general have always had paramount importance, especially after Jews were dispersed from their homeland. The Torah is replete with references to Jerusalem.

True, but irrelevant! Almost all agree that the religious sites in Jerusalem must be respected.

I assume these background anecdotes are intended to preview your sense of personal moral outrage at the failings (as you perceived them) of Zionism and of recent Israeli governments—just as you take pride in their accomplishments. This is quite understandable. Here you preface your central viewpoint that Israel has become an “oppressor” and, as a result, has forfeited your respect as a Jew and as an American. This, too, is quite understandable. Yet, defining that term, “oppressor,” and using it accurately are more difficult.

In this context you might have mentioned FDR’s odious decision to turn away boatloads of Jewish refugees from American ports.

This is one of the many misunderstandings of history, and a defamation of the memory of F.D.R. At the time there was a very clear immigration law in existence. It had no provision for asylum for refugees. F.D.R. did not have the power to let people without visas enter the country. The proposal of Secretary of Labor Perkins would have helped, but unbeknownst to F.D.R. the State Department had a strong antipathy to Jews. See here. But this really has no bearing on our discussion here.

Here, I feel compelled to point out that you, like every historian who creates a narrative, are obligated to select your “facts.” It’s never possible to include everything (historicism) and any attempt to do so would lead to utter confusion. You have scrupulously defended your attention to “facts,” but you ignore the implicit values that guide your selection of which facts to include.

Probably true, but obviously unavoidable! That is why I invite comments and disagreements.

For example, here you assume that, in 1947, Arab residents of the British Palestine Mandate thought of themselves as a “people” with its own territory. Many other facts document that, on the contrary, Arabs (both resident in the Mandate and non-resident) conceived themselves as part of a larger pan-Arab, Muslim “umma.” Arab leaders at the time, such as newly installed Hashemite King Abdullah of Transjordan, wanted desperately to annex Palestine to their holdings. The epitome of this trend came with Gamel Abdel Nasser’s ill-fated Pan-Arabism of the 1960s.

The fallacy of the above lies in the fact that Gamel Abdel Nasser’s Pan-Arabism was ill fated. But more important, this argument is rather offensive, for it attempts to rob the Arab people living in Palestine of their humanity. The only relevant fact is that at the time of the 1948 partition, and to this day, there are Arabs living in Palestine. By any definition, people who live in Palestine are Palestinians. Many of those who lived in Palestine in 1948 were driven from their homes, and have ended up in a diaspora, being victims of the Jewish, understandable, desire to end their own diaspora.

At no time in recorded history has there ever been a “Palestinian people” or state.

This is a very frequently stated, but a totally irrelevant fact. None of the states that emerged from colonialism existed. The Jewish Virtual Library (See here.) sets forth the facts and I don’t think they are cherry picking them: ”Jordan did not exist until 1921 when Winston Churchill invented it.”

In fact the whole Middle East used to be part of the Ottoman Empire and most of the states in the Middle East were created after World War I.

From the "History of the Middle East" page on Wikipedia: Syria became a French protectorate thinly disguised as a League of Nations mandate. The Christian coastal areas were split off to become Lebanon, another French protectorate. Iraq and Palestine became British mandated territories. Iraq became the "Kingdom of Iraq" and one of Sharif Hussein's sons, Faisal, was installed as the King of Iraq. Iraq incorporated large populations of Kurds, Assyrians and Turkmens, many of whom had been promised independent states of their own. See here.

But whatever the history of the region is, the modern Arab states as well as Israel are a creation of the Imperial powers and what existed and when is largely irrelevant.

When a people live in a given territory they take the name of that territory. People who live in Palestine are Palestinians and if they are not what are they? Jordanians? But Jordan has disclaimed all sovereignty over the area. Israelis too are Palestinians, but since the two people have little in common, only partition, which has always been assumed to be the optimum solution, remains. The new drive in Israel for Israeli sovereignty over the whole area is nothing more than a plan to deny a minority population their right of self-determination, and possibly, even a means of ghettoizing them.

Yasir Arafat created a distinct Arab “Palestinian” identity after 1967 as part of a strategy to destroy Israel.

This is a bold-faced statement, but Nekimken gives no source or support. As a matter of fact he doesn’t give references for any of his assertions, as I do. 

It was based on the story of the shared “catastrophe” of the Nakhba in May 1948, which had been preceded by 30 years of planned, anti-Jewish uprisings.  

You presume here that Arabs accepted the Western idea of the nation state in opposition to colonialism. However, Arab nationalism developed only slowly among elites and, according to the Salafist view that underpinned the anti-Jewish resistance, the concept of the “nation state” itself was rejected as a Western (“alien”) import.

This is certainly true of the Isis or Isil movement in Syria and Iraq, but I see no support for this assertion, for any of the other modern Arab states.

Your use of the term “alien non-Arab entity” deserves particular attention. You appear to assume that only Arabs “deserve” to live in the Middle East when, in fact, the region is a mosaic of peoples and cultures (albeit often at each other’s throats).

This is a strange assertion, since I have not used the term “alien non-Arab entity” anywhere.

It’s difficult to understand how Jews can be considered “alien” when their kingdoms in the region preceded the migration of Arabs out of the Arabian peninsula and took form some 5,000 years ago.

But so did the Roman Empire. Are we to resurrect it? The claim to a Jewish homeland cannot be based on ancient history. Its claim, and this claim is legitimate, is its crucial need for a homeland where in times of persecution Jews would always be welcome, and this was the basis for Herzl’s advocacy of Zionism. To be sure other minorities, whether Christians, Druze, or Kurds, have lived there for centuries, but they have always been there as minorities in an overwhelming Arab Muslim population. The expectation that Arabs would have a natural animosity to Jewish settlement, was recognized by the Godfather of the present Israeli government Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, who wrote, as I point out in "Part XX.":

“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized…That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of ‘Palestine’ into the 'Land of Israel.”

Your lamentable observation that Jews living in Arab countries did not “agitate for independence” is best forgotten. In truth, Jews lived in Muslim territories as second-class citizens (dhimmis) who were accepted, tolerated or oppressed at various times. Before the advent of Zionism, they couldn’t afford the luxury of expressing political views.

I made no such observation! That Jews were second class citizens in Arab countries is undoubtedly true, but has little, if any bearing on our discussion, particularly, since Jews for centuries, fled from Christian countries to Muslim ones, because they could have a better life there.

Inter alia, the millions of Kurds resident in the Middle East over millennia have never had their own independent territory.

True! But its relevance escapes me. I think they should have.

More important, you appear to have forgotten that anti-Jewish hatred has been the primary motivating factor in the conflict between Zionists and Arabs over the past hundred years. There were numerous times when territorial compromises could have been negotiated. Yet, at every point, Arabs refused to accept any Jewish presence on any lands perceived as belonging to them, except as a tolerated (and powerless) minority. Land, per se, was never the paramount issue.

I disagree “that anti-Jewish hatred has been the primary motivating factor.” But this raises the question of what came first – the chicken or the egg – we can argue this ad infinitum.

Inexplicably, you neglect to mention that early Zionists accepted every territorial concession presented to them that offered peace—first a British decision to cede the land east of the Jordan River to Arabs to create a new, “Palestinian” state of Transjordan, then the 1947 partition plan which you describe here. After the June 1967 war came the famous September Khartoum Declaration of “No peace, No recognition, No negotiation with Israel” which ended Israeli delusions about any “new understanding” that could lead to peace.

I refer the reader back to Jabotinsky. This was to be expected. As long as they felt that they could win, they were not ready to compromise. Now that they know they can’t win, they want to compromise. And that represents the opportunity we have been looking for.

Nevertheless, Israel subsequently and unilaterally returned a portion of Golan territory to Syria and the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

Not unilaterally! As part of negotiations leading to a cessation of hostilities.

Later, Israel withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip.

This was not done out of generosity. It was a military decision that continuing occupation was costing Israel too much, and that withdrawal, with a blockade, would aid Israel in claiming all of the West Bank.

(In contrast, when Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri [who was later assassinated by Hezbullah] was asked why he couldn’t accept Israeli presence on a small parcel of borderland called Sheba Farms, he replied trenchantly, “Why should I?”)

This is hardly unusual. Nations are very jealous about their territorial integrity, and all nations are reluctant to give up “one inch” of what they consider to be part of their nation.

As indicated earlier, historians select their “facts” based on covert or overt values. It isn’t possible to assess “rights” or “wrongs” without identifying these values.

This is an unfortunate comment for it relegates all history, and all facts, as being subjective, and therefor implies that we should not be bothered by facts or by history. But then what is left. This assertion suggests, or implies, that facts and history are on my side of the debate, and therefor we should ignore them.

I now welcome comments readers care to make, but it may be difficult to post them, while this discussion with Nekimken is in progress. 

I AM A JEW (PART XXI - Voices in Defense of Israel)

As the title shows this is the 21st part (actually the 22^nd, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts, I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on Part I and then scrolling upwards or by accessing the label I Am A Jew.

I have not been publishing any comments received from readers because as I said at the end of each my blogs: “I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete. “

The series is not complete, but I think it is time to publish some of the comments I have received, and to analyze them.

Leonard Levenson, a criminal defense attorney, living and having his office in Manhattan, NY wrote:

I have been following your series very closely. I am very impressed by the thoroughness of your research and the apparent logic of your arguments. However, though I find your facts are correct, the conclusions you draw from them are not. I have been waiting for you to complete your series before responding in depth. At the outset however, I believe that all of the atrocities committed by Israel stem from the overhanging threat to their existence. The massacre at Deir Yassin for example occurred during a fight for Israel's very survival. The source of danger was, of course Arab hostility. The assassination of Count Bernadotte was the perception that he posed a threat to the survival of Israel. The reaction was extreme and unwise but it stemmed from Arab hostility.

 Israel, on the other hand was willing to cooperate with regard to the development of the Middle East economically and developmentally. Beneficial proposals for the irrigation of dry land in Palestine by diverting the Litani River would have greatly increased the productivity of the land but was rejected by Palestinian and Arab leaders. Other economic and developmental projects such as joint desalination proposals were put forth and likewise rejected.

 The terrorist acts by Israel were essentially misguided defensive acts designed to protect the Israeli state and population. The terrorist acts of the Arabs were misguided offensive acts designed to destroy Israel. I have not yet completed my research into the specifics of my comments. I doubt that it will be as thorough as yours. However, when completed I will communicate further.

This is a perfect example of what I see as a kind of “kneejerk” reaction in defense of actions by Israel that purport to be based on researched facts, but that upon examination are anything but that.

Levenson writes: “The massacre at Deir Yassin for example occurred during a fight for Israel's very survival.”

Even if that were true, would it justify the slaughter of innocent men, women and children? But it isn’t even true!

If Levenson had bothered to read my post "I AM A JEW (Part II)" carefully he would not have made this blanket statement for I wrote, and I quote in part:

“What has come to be known as the Deir Yassin massacre is instructive. I quote from Wikipedia:

“The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun Zevai Leumi and Lohamei Herut Israel Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian Arab village of roughly 600 people. The assault occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem by Palestinian forces during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine…. sparked terror within the Palestinian community, encouraging them to flee from their towns and villages in the face of Jewish troop advances, and it strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to intervene, which they did five weeks later. (Emphasis added)”

I call Levenson’s attention to the fact that at this point Israel was not “fighting for its life.” Arab armies entered the fray five weeks later and to a large extent because of this event. If Levenson, or for that matter other readers, want to know more of the details of Deir Yassin, I urge them to read the post here.

But Deir Yassin - or for that matter the bombing of the King David hotel - would not be a blot on Israel but for events that followed, about which the Jerusalem Post recently wrote:

On July 22, 1946, three phone calls were placed to the King David Hotel, an adjacent building and to The Jerusalem Post (then The Palestine Post), warning of an imminent bombing. Minutes later, a blast ripped through the historic hotel and then-headquarters of the British Mandate for Palestine’s civilian and military authorities, killing 91 people and injuring nearly 50.

These acts were not done by the Israeli Defense Forces, “The Haganah” but by the terrorist organizations known as the Stern Gang, later the Irgun and violated the ethics of The Haganah, which believed in “Purity of Arms.” In fact the differences between these groups was so fierce that it led to an actual clash of arms between them in the not to be forgotten “sinking of the ‘Altalena.’” 

So as long as the forces of decency reigned in Israel, it would have been wrong to even mention these horrendous deeds. But the Israel of its founders, the Israel of Ben-Gurion, is no more. The enemies of the Haganah, the enemies of Ben-Gurion, the very people who called Yitzhak Rabin a Nazi, and whose denunciations of him were directly responsible for his assassination, are now running the Israeli government.

They know no “Purity of Arms”! They are the philosophic descendants of terrorists, and they bear the blot of Deir Yassin and the King David Hotel and the Atelena.

As for Levenson’s comment:

Israel, on the other hand was willing to cooperate with regard to the development of the Middle East economically and developmentally. Beneficial proposals for the irrigation of dry land in Palestine by diverting the Litani River would have greatly increased the productivity of the land but was rejected by Palestinian and Arab leaders.

It is totally inaccurate, even though I wish it were true.

According to Wikipedia under the heading: “Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan” it states:

1955 US ambassador Eric Johnston negotiated the Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan… Jordan undertook to abide by their allocations under the plan. The plan was initially un-ratified by Israel, but after the US linked the Johnston plan to aid, also agreed to accept the allocation provisions.

In that same post, under the heading: “Subsequent developments” it relates:

1988 The Syrian/Jordanian agreement on development of the Yarmouk is blocked when Israel as a riparian right holder refuses to ratify the plan and the World Bank withholds funding. Israel's augments its Johnson plan allocation of 25,000,000 m³/yr by a further 45,000,000–75,000,000 m³/yr.

That doesn’t quite sound like the Levenson rendition.

There are many American Jews who are deeply concerned that the Israel that true Zionists like my father and I, and untold survivors of the Holocaust, and their children, is no more. We want an Israel that returns to the ideals of its founders, to the people, like Levenson, who went to Israel to work on a kibbutz, but that Israel is no more.

It is proud Jews, not self-hating ones, who decry what has happened and is happening in Israel. Who paid for advertisements in the New York Times like the one that appeared in the Times on September 16^th 2014 entitled “An Open letter to President Obama.” 

True Zionists seek the ideals on which Israel was founded!! Not the one of Netanyahu and Lieberman. Not the one that is described here:

I rode a bus in Jerusalem on January 22, that in and of itself is not unusual. What made this 90 minute journey unique was that it had been arranged by Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Centre (IRAC) for myself and Judith Sudilovsky, a free-lance journalist on assignment for Na’amat magazine. Our task was to observe and record gender segregation on bus line 56. On this bus line and others both in Jerusalem and between Jerusalem and other cities Haredim insist that women sit in the back of the bus, and when possible only enter through the back door.

Or the one described in an e-mail from “The Pluralist” an Israeli women’s organization:

The controversial nation state bill that passed its initial vote…(asserts) that only the Hebrew calendar will be the official state calendar… (or) that Arabic, the native tongue of 21% of Israel's population, will no longer be an official language on par with Hebrew.

But neither Levenson, nor most Americans, instinctive Israeli defenders of Israel, know what is going on. They believe what they want to believe, not what the reality is.

People in Israel are beginning to see the crisis that Israel has brought on itself. Thus a former director general of the Mossad, Shabtai Shavit writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz - see here or here - tells us:

I am truly concerned about the future of the Zionist project… the government’s blindness and political and strategic paralysis on the other. Although the State of Israel is dependent upon the United States, the relationship between the two countries has reached an unprecedented low point. Europe, our biggest market, has grown tired of us and is heading toward imposing sanctions on us. For China, Israel is an attractive high-tech project, and we are selling them our national assets for the sake of profit. Russia is gradually turning against us and supporting and assisting our enemies.

 I am concerned that large segments of the nation of Israel have forgotten, or put aside, the original vision of Zionism: to establish a Jewish and democratic state for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. No borders were defined in that vision, and the current defiant policy is working against it.

What can and ought to be done? We need to create an Archimedean lever that will stop the current deterioration and reverse today’s reality at once. I propose creating that lever by using the Arab League’s proposal from 2002, which was partly created by Saudi Arabia. The government must make a decision that the proposal will be the basis of talks with the moderate Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

True American supporters of Israel, of whatever faith, must stop blindly labeling resistance to oppression terrorism, and not excuse the inexcusable, defend the indefensible, rationalize the irrational, or justify the unjustifiable.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.