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.

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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 XIV - The Israeli Propaganda Machine v. The Alleged Power of the Arab Lobby)

As the title shows this is the 14th part (actually the 15^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 the parts.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Special Bulletin, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII and Part XIII.

In response to my post: "I AM A JEW (PART XI - The Israeli Propaganda Machine)," Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia, wrote:

I suggest that you read the articles entitled: “The Arab Lobby – The American Component”, by Mitchell Bard and "The Arab Lobby: The European Component" by Steven J. Rosen as counterbalance to your current campaign against the "Israeli propaganda machine."

I urge my readers to also do so, because one should always be willing to expose oneself to a counterbalance of any viewpoint. But as for me I find myself singularly unimpressed by the presentation set forth in these articles.

Of course all depends on the definition of a “lobby." Webster’s Dictionary on line defines lobby (noun) as “a group of persons engaged in lobbying especially as representatives of a particular interest group” and lobby (verb) “to try to influence government officials to make decisions for or against something” and “to try to get something you want by talking to the people who make decisions”

I agree with that definition and by that definition the article “The Arab Lobby – The American Component” fails to support its claim.

As early as the fourth paragraph of the article the author writes:

Thus, while Louis Brandeis may have lobbied Woodrow Wilson for U.S. support for the Balfour declaration, the president's closest advisor, "Colonel" Edward House, vigorously opposed it. Harry Truman's friend Eddie Jacobson asked for the president's support for Israel but his secretary of state, George Marshall, threatened to vote against Truman if he recognized the newly established state.

Thus the author almost immediately reveals a misunderstanding, or worse a deliberate distortion, of what a lobby is and what lobbying constitutes. Let us look at the definition of a lobby, “a group of persons engaged in lobbying” and the definition of lobby (verb) is ““to try to influence government officials”.

But when we look at the paragraph quoted above we see that the author is not talking about outsiders trying to influence government officials, he is talking about government officials exercising their duties to advise the President as to what they believe is in the interests of the US. That is their duty! That is their responsibility! The fact that they believed that certain policies were in the best interests of the US, which favored one country or another, or one policy over another, does not make their behavior lobbying, or turn public officials into lobbyists. George Marshall, as Secretary of State felt strongly about what was in the best interests of the US, and expressed it in no uncertain terms.

It was Truman who was politically conscious when he said, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs as well as Information Clearing House:

I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.

I personally think Truman made the right decision, but to denigrate the many in the State Department who felt that in International Affairs, certain policies, which Bard disapproves of, were both in the interests of the US and fairer than the alternative, is a blatant distortion.

Allow me to quote further from the Washington Report:

 Forty-four years after these events, [Clark] Clifford, Truman's principal domestic advisor, has produced his memoir…

The article goes on to quote Clifford as follows: 

Marshall firmly opposed American recognition of the new Jewish state; I did not. Marshall's opposition was shared by almost every member of the brilliant and now legendary group of presidential advisers, later referred to as the Wise Men, who were then in the process of creating a post-war foreign policy that would endure for more than 40 years. The opposition included the respected Under Secretary of State Robert Lovett; his predecessor, Dean Acheson; the No. 3 man in the State Department, Charles Bohlen; the brilliant chief of the Policy Planning Staff George Kennan; (Navy Secretary James V.) Forrestal; and ... Dean Rusk, then the director of the Office of United Nations Affairs... 

To call these dedicated public servants lobbyists is the height of Chutzpa.

There were many reasons for their views. There were far more Arabs in the world than Jews. But at least as important they felt that the partition was imminently unfair for it: 

awarded 56 percent of Palestine to its 650,000 Jewish inhabitants, and 44 percent to its 1,300,000 Muslim and Christian Arab inhabitants.

If there was any lobbying at the time (or since) it was by the “Jewish” lobby. Quoting again from the Washington Report:

"Lovett began by criticizing what he termed signs of growing 'assertiveness' by the Jewish Agency ... Marshall interrupted Lovett. He was strongly opposed to the behavior of the Jewish Agency, he said.

And where does the article go from trying to label public servants and even the Secretary of State lobbyists, It argues that American foreign policy has unwisely catered to the Saudis. This may or may not be sound policy, but it is difficult to see what it has to do with an Arab lobby.

The author writes:

Arab states have benefited in the United States from the support of oil companies, defense contractors, and, perhaps most of all, from Arabists within the State Department.

Oil companies and defense contractors pursue their own interests – if that interest happens to coincide with those of certain countries, that does not make them a lobby for them. As for so-called Arabists in the State Department, they are doing their job, and work for what they believe to be in the best interest of their country, the USA. They are public officials, not lobbyists.

The rest of the article is essentially a polemic criticizing American foreign policy in the Middle East, but this has little if anything to do with proving the existence of an Arab lobby in the United States.

But the author, possibly inadvertently, shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no Arab lobby in the US, and in fact why it is impossible for one to exist, when he writes:

… limiting …their influence are the divisions among Arabs and Muslims, which carry over to their expatriates and their descendants in the United States. According to the 2000 U.S. census, 1.2 million Americans were of Arab descent. Unlike the Israel lobby, which can stand up for the strengthening of America's relationship with a single nation, it is difficult, if not impossible for Arab Americans to represent all Arabs because Americans of Arab descent come from no fewer than twenty-one countries with conflicting interests and which are often feuding among themselves. As Jawad George, the executive secretary of the Palestine Congress of North America said, "The same things that divide the Arab world divide the Arab-American world.”

The author goes on to undermine his own argument by admitting that:

Over the last two decades, …(they) have had no discernible impact on policy.

Now when we come to Rosen’s article, we find that he defeats his argument about an effective Arab lobby in relation to US policy toward Israel at the outset, for he writes about: “A Petrodollar Lobby” but then says:

Yet it is difficult to see significant evidence of the impact of the petrodollar lobby in the Arab-Israeli sphere or any major effort on their part to interfere in the bilateral relationship between the United States and Israel.

Having found no effective Arab lobby anywhere, he like Bard, tries to turn government officials into lobbyists, in this case European ones.

The strongest external force pressuring the U.S. government to distance itself from Israel is not the Arab-American organizations, the Arab embassies, the oil companies, or the petrodollar lobby. Rather, it is the Europeans, especially the British, French, and Germans, that are the most influential Arab lobby to the U.S. government.

But governments are not lobbyists. Governmental officials argue for the policies they believe are in the best interests of their countries. By no stretch of the imagination will the argument that public servants are lobbyists stand up to any kind of objective scrutiny.

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

I AM A JEW (Part II)

Comments about Part I:

At the end of my last post entitled "I AM A JEW (Part I)" I concluded with “Please hold your comments, if any, until the end of this exposition, unless you feel that you have something to add to a particular portion, rather than to the whole.”

This prompted some comments, which did, to a large extend, address the first part.

George Garver of Fort Lee, NJ, objected to my taking pride in my ethnicity, writing:

Pride comes from a sense of accomplishment and not happenstance. You had no choice regarding your unchosen heritage. 


To which I responded:

Your point is well taken, at least in theory. But the fact is that all (or at least most) people take pride in their heritage. That is why so many people spend countless amounts of money tracing their ancestors. And our heritage has a lot to do with who we are. 

I am proud to be an American is a common refrain.  

When an American landed on the moon, we all felt proud. That is the way things work in the real world. 

We take pride even in our adopted associations. I am proud to be a Yankee fan. I am glad “my team” won, even though I had nothing to with it. 

Our heritage is a large part of what and who we are, and what we are, if it is positive, is a perfectly natural reason for pride. 

Ideally, maybe it should be as you say, but that isn’t the real world. People take pride in who their father was. The Kennedy clan takes pride in being Kennedys and the public accepts that.

Robert Malchman of Brooklyn, NY, called to my attention an error that I made:

Not to nit-pick, but as Jews, should we not be referring to Jesus as "Christ," which implies that he was the Messiah?   

I'll be interested to see where this is going.  I think there is plenty of blame to go around.

My response recognized my error. Accordingly I wrote:

Your point is well taken.

I should not have referred to Christ, I should have referred to Jesus.

Hal Wolkoff of Montclair, NJ, expressed this view:

I look forward to your further comments.  I am a Jew, probably very similar in my beliefs and political views to you. I strongly support Israel but have a great deal of sympathy for the Palestinian people. When it comes to who is responsible for the continuous violence and deaths of innocents there is no doubt in my mind. The blame belongs entirely to the Palestinian/Arab leadership who continue to reject Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State.

To which I did not respond since it goes to the heart of the issue and my posts are the only way that I know how to respond.

I AM A Jew (Part II)

The early Jewish settlers to Palestine came from Europe. They were the true refugees for whom the state was founded. They are known as Ashkenazi. Many of them, possibly most were, what is known in Europe as Social Democrats. In the terminology of the US they were something akin to New Dealers. They formed the many Kibbutzim, using modern irrigation, to “make the desert bloom” and their organization was strictly socialist, with all sharing equally in the produce of the settlement. 

They were strong supporters of the Labor Party.

But the founding of Israel, while it had a profound impact on Jews fleeing Nazi persecution and even after when the survivors needed to escape from the scenes of the horrors, it had a negative effect on Jews who had lived in peace and prosperity for generations in Arab lands. They suddenly faced anti-Semitism and persecution from their host nations, and as a result they fled in large numbers to Israel, greatly embittered against the Arabs. They flocked to what had until then been a minority party, i.e. Likud. The final wave of immigrants were the Russian, who having lived under an oppressive socialist dictatorship, found themselves with little sympathy for Socialist, or even Social Democratic ideas. They too flocked to Likud.

But even at a very early stage of the founding of Israel, there were three factions, One organized the Haganah, which later became the Labor party, the second was Irgun, which later became Herut under the leadership of Menachim Begin, who later became Prime Minister, and eventually became Likud and a very small group known as the Stern gang. What followed was a series of terrorist attacks. That included in 1948 the assassination of Count Bernadotte, a Swedish mediator, but also included a whole series of terrorist attacks by the Irgun and Stern gangs, which included the famous bombing of the King David Hotel, but many others as well. See here. Relations between Irgun and the Haganah became so bad that there was an armed stand off between the two Jewish armed organizations, which came to be known as the Atelena affair. 

There has long been a debate about whether Arabs left Israel out of their own free will, at the urgings of their leaders or were driven out by Israeli forces conducting ethnic cleansing. After extensive research I have concluded that both are true. 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.

Around 107 villagers were killed during and after the battle for the village, including women and children—some were shot, while others died when hand grenades were thrown into their homes. Several villagers were taken prisoner and may have been killed after being paraded through the streets of West Jerusalem, though accounts vary. Four of the attackers died, with around 35 injured. The killings were condemned by the leadership of the Haganah—the Jewish community's main paramilitary force—and by the area's two chief rabbis. The Jewish Agency for Israel sent Jordan's King Abdullah a letter of apology, which he rebuffed.

The deaths became a pivotal event in the Arab–Israeli conflict for their demographic and military consequences. The narrative was embellished and used by various parties to attack each other—by the Palestinians against Israel; by the Haganah to play down their own role in the affair; and by the Israeli Left to accuse the Irgun and Lehi of violating the Jewish principle of purity of arms, thus blackening Israel's name around the world. News of the killings 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 don’t want to quote more, but it gets worse. Those who are interested can read the rest of the entry.

All this might be dismissed as ancient history, but it is relevant for two reasons. It shows that terrorism is the inevitable method for the weak who feel they cannot succeed without resort to it (The Irish Republican Army, which many Americans sympathized with is another example) and it is relevant because the ruling party of Israel, Likud, is the successor to these terrorists. It’s founding rejects the very idea of a Palestinian state. I quote from the document.

The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting…. The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River.

And so we find the frequent criticism of Hamas in so far its founding charter reads,

Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.

But is that so different from Likud’s claim to all of Palestine including the whole West Bank and Gaza. To expect Hamas to drop this demand can only be the end result of negotiations, not a pre-condition.

The PLO used to have a similar provision in its charter. It provided under Article 17:

The Partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of Israel are illegal and false regardless of the loss of time, because they were contrary to the wish of the Palestine people and its natural right to its homeland, and in violation of the basic principles embodied in the charter of the United Nations, foremost among which is the right to self-determination.

But as long ago as 1988 it accepted Israel’s right to exist. 

After a two-day meeting with five prominent American Jews here, a P.L.O. delegation led by Mr. Arafat said in a joint statement that the Palestinian parliament in exile last month had ''accepted the existence of Israel as a state in the region'' and ''declared its rejection and condemnation of terrorism in all its forms.''

Where did it get them? Has Israel reciprocated by recognizing the right of a Palestinian Sate? Did this prompt the cessation of Israel’s endless encroachment of Palestinian territory? Has it stopped the creeping annexation of the West Bank? Or for that matter the military occupation of the whole West Bank? To all intents and purposes the P.L.O. has been turned into the Vichy government of the West Bank, and then the Likud government of Israel claims the PLO is too weak to be a negotiating partner.