I've got to say something about the Helen Thomas affair. (See this article too.) I hope no one will need a further demonstration of the power of Israel's amen chorus in the United States. Her snarky extemporaneous remark was ill-advised, and she apologized. (It was also vague; she might have been referring to settlements in the West Bank rather than pre-1967 Israel.) But no one ever got fired or blacklisted for believing the Palestinians should "go back" to where they came from -- allegedly, Jordan, Egypt, etc. (They didn't really come from there. They were always in Palestine.) Indeed, lots of people believe -- with impunity -- that the Palestinian people are a fiction! ("There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist." --former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.)
Helen Thomas, unlike the sycophants who make up the White House press corps, at least had the courage to ask hard questions of power (also this one), such as, Why attack Iraq? Or, What motivates Muslim terrorists? Might it have something to do with America's brutality and callousness in the Middle East? As a woman of Christian Lebanese heritage, she has every justification for being critical of Israel. Silencing her is something many people have wanted to do for a long time.
I'll end this with a quotation from David Ben Gurion, a founder of Israel and the Jewish State's first prime minister. Don't bother to doubt its authenticity. It has been quoted many times, and I am not aware of anyone's even claiming it is not genuine. It comes from a respected Jewish source. There are many similar quotations from Israel's founders, going back to Herzl. They are not hard to find. Compare it to Meir's statement above.
Ben Gurion:
Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. [A patently false statement. --sr] We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out. [Emphasis added. Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, p. 99]Does this mean that anyone should "go back" to anywhere? No, it does not. Much time has passed. But it does give some perspective on who ultimately are the aggrieved parties. Before you can get perspective, however, you have to take your friggin' head out of the sand. You cannot do history a priori.
Here are a few links to articles I wrote nearly 20 years ago:
28 comments:
There's a pretty close parallel to official Afrikaner histories in which the Bantu are all descended from people who moved south after the whites already settled, because they were attracted by the new prosperity.
Kevin, in the 1980s Joan Peters published "From Time Immemorial," which purported to show that the Zionists had moved to an empty territory and later attracted "the Palestinians" when the desert began to bloom. The book enthralled the American necons and their allies. "Finally!" they said. But the book was demolished -- to howls of laughter -- in England and Israel. From Wikipedia: "Reviewing the book for the November 28, 1985 issue of The New York Times, Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath described the book as a 'sheer forgery,' stating that '[i]n Israel, at least, the book was almost universally dismissed as sheer rubbish except maybe as a propaganda weapon.'"
It was the Bellesiles affair applied to the Middle East. Yet it is still cited today by Israel's defenders. Someone threw it at me on Facebook recently.
Peace will only be possible in the when the rights of both Arab and Jew are respected. Given the demographics of the region, Israel must impose some form a apartheid if it is to remain a Jewish state. Israeli intransigence has been encouraged by the United States whose government continues to be in the thral of the Israeli lobby.
helen is right. except with her apology. none was needed. none should have been given.
one decent apple on(formerly) a tree filled with rot.
In reference to Joan Peter's book, it is worth noting that Elie Wiesel, Saul Bellow, and Barbara Tuchman wrote gushing blurbs that were printed on the back cover of the first edition. All remained respectable figures in American society. None lost jobs or even experienced any adverse publicity from the mainstream media. What Helen Thomas said--and I think it was callous in the extreme to tell Jews to go back to Germany or Poland--was not any more factually incorrect than what Peters and the writers of the blurbs stated.
Yet look at the difference in treatment.
Jessica Ramer
jews in palestine came from poland, germany, america, russia, and many more countries.
helen said this. her statement was not callous.
as if she said "return to the ovens".
her statement was 100% accurate. joan peters and friends were out right liars.
Jessica, great point!
i refer to the jew occupying land in palestine. each one is a monster. to equate a palestinian and an israeli is itself monstrous. even uri avnery. he does protest and speaks many fine words. he will not give up the home and land that is not his. his by force.
the statehood movement began from the beginning. they were not peaceful. their intent was to take over and to take all.
the palestinians did not wave their claim. it was waved by force for them.
Lazlo, Arafat had the overwhelming support of Palestinians when he changed the policy. It wasn't done by force. So a Jew who lived peacefully with Arabs in Palestine before 1948 or 1900 is a monster? And all the Jews working for an equitable and peaceful arrangement, with full rights for Palestinians? They are monsters? You speak like a fool.
forgot.
take my land, everything, then give me "full"rights.
funny.
Laslo, I don't know where you live, but here in America we've got some 300 million people who may well keep what was once some Indian's home. I don't propose to emigrate to my ancestral lands in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall, so I guess that makes me a monster.
What about all the Israeli Jews in the same predicament?
Sheldon: I'm skeptical, however, as to how many rank and file Palestinians have emotionally waived their right of return. In college I knew a Palestinian student who said the refugee camps were laid out according to the town in Palestine they live in before 1948, and according to the neighborhoods they lived in when some of the larger towns were involved. He knew old men who still carried their house key ("May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth," and all that).
I don't see any easy answer that can accommodate anyone on either side without seeming unfairness. But one step in the right direction would be to allow unrestricted immigration and acquisition of land by Palestinians inside the 1948 borders, and give them first rights of refusal to any vacant or state-owned land.
--Kevin Carson
Kevin, I am highly sympathetic to what you suggest. I have heard the same stories about Palestinians who recall being driven from their homes. I am on their side. I don't claim to have a perfect answer or any real answer at all. I don't want to see a bloodbath for anyone.
kevin,once all indian land. and it has been trashed.
i know any number of indians who would love to cut your throat even if you are an innocent.
you, a monster. too late for that, probably. depends on your morality. g. wash, who i mentioned, was.
all those calling themselves israeli are criminal monsters.
Come to think of it I knew the Palestinian guy more than a decade before the events you describe surrounding Oslo, so there may have been some shift in opinion.
Re the Ben Gurion quote in another post, wasn't he a secular Zionist from a Social Democratic background? I wonder if his comments about God weren't disingenuous.
I vaguely recall that early socialist Zionists did things like march to the Wailing Wall eating ham sandwitches just to offend the Jewish religious scholars previously living around the holy sites.
Sorry, Laslo. Perhaps I should ring a bell and shout "Unclean, unclean!" It's a wonder you don't fear trolling this comment thread will sully your moral purity.
kevin, as you wish. i have no idea what you said.
any way my time is up.
thank you.
Jeff, it was later than that. See Arafat's biography.
Actually, I'm not "Anonymous". I'm Jeff Davis.
Sheldon, you said, "As for the rest of the population, decades ago the Palestinians waived their claim to return to land in pre-1967 Israel."
Just when and how did they do that? I missed it. Perhaps it got drowned out by "Run! Run for your lives!"
I'm a 61 year old non-religious American Jew, and grateful for it. It wasn't till after 9/11 that I bothered to look into the history of Israel. When I did, I was shocked. But I was (and am) a hard left progressive, so I was able to adjust with out breaking stride.
Here's everything you need to know about the origins of Israel but were afraid to ask:
The last three are long, scholarly, and frankly, a bit dry. However, the first, for obvious reasons, is quite entertaining.
"Concerning the Jews" by Mark Twain http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/mtwain/bl-mtwain-concerningjews.htm
The Hidden History of Zionism
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/
Behind the Balfour Declaration
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p389_John.html#ftn180
Benjamin Freedman
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/freedman.htm
What I didn't miss was Ben Gurion saying:
Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. [A patently false statement. --sr] We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out. [Emphasis added. Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, p. 99]
Jeff, I read Schoenman's book years ago and lost track of it. Thanks for the link.
Please send me email at sheldon@sheldonrichman.com
Sheldon, did you read the comment to the second article you linked to, by Valis667? Pretty strong stuff, but I don't doubt that it's true.
Steven, I don't know which article you mean. Please clarify.
Okay, I see it now. It's actually the fourth link. Yes, hard-hitting and I wonder if badly exaggerated.
The "Getting to the Bottom of Why They Want to Hurt Us" article. Click on(also this one) in your post.
Mr. Richman:
Could you please substantiate your claim that Palestinians waived their right to return to pre-1967 Israel? I have been reading on the conflict for several years and have never seen this claim made before..
On Nov. 15, 1988, Yasser Arafat issued a declaration of independence for Palestine in accord with UN resolutions regarding Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In subsequent speeches, Arafat made clear he was endorsing a two-state solution.
I don't want to push this point too hard, but only as indicative of Arafat's position in light of the fact that he and his secular Fatah were immensely popular among Palestinians -- so popular that Israel tried to fragment Palestinian allegiance by helping Hamas, a religious alternative, to grow. The point is that the leading Palestinian figure of his accepted a two-state solution, which means he was not seeking Israeli withdrawal from the pre-1967 territory. I believe position this was already implicit in Arafat's famous UN "gun and olive branch" speech in 1974.
"What does it mean, a state? It's a solution for less than one quarter of the Palestinian people on an area that is less than 10% of historic Palestine." Palestinian leaders who are ready to accept this "are a bunch of traitors to their own cause". --Meron Benvenisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem
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