Israel

[JohnFKennedy]

The Jews were perfectly willing to live side by side with Palestinians, in 1947.  It was the Palestinians who were totally unwilling to negotiate.  Just as it has been the Palestinians who have backed away from the table every single time since.

Unwilling to negotiate? I would say it was rather hard for the Palestinians to negotiate at all given that the British had dismantled both the Higher Arab Committee and the Supreme Muslim Council in 1936, leaving Palestinian Arabs lacking in effective and united leadership. So who represents the Palestinian cause? The Arab League whose member states were facing mounting domestic unrest and in many cases had an intrinsic interest in there not being a viable Palestinian state: for instance Abdullah of Jordan's involvement in the 1948 war was primarily a bid to control the Palestinian part of the partition, rather than any meaningful attempt at establishing an independent Palestinian state as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has shown in his work on the 1948 war (I'll be happy to give a reference if you want). It's also not true to suggest that it has been 'the Palestinians who have backed away from the table every single time since'; certainly Palestinian negotiators have rejected proposals for peace but so too have the Israelis, for instance with the 2003 Geneva Accord.

I would further disagree with your claim that 'the Jews were perfectly willing to live side by side with Palestinians, in 1947'. This is not to say that all Jews demonstrated hostility towards Palestinians, but certainly many did. I wonder why you think all the Palestinians living in what became Israel left their homes and land? Let's not forget that the UNSCOP committee found that Jews constituted only about a third of the population and owned roughly six percent of the total land in Palestine. So what happened to those 400,000 Palestinians? Certainly they resisted - as probably anyone would if they were being forced out of their homes - but were no match for the disciplined Haganah, or the terrorist attacks of the Irgun who perpetrated some horrific acts including the Dayr Yassin massacre. Benny Morris is probably the leading expert today on the 1948 Palestinian refugee problem (The Birth o the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949) and he doesn't ascribe it down to the orders of the Palestinian leadership (what leadership anyway?) or a planned Israeli policy but to the consequeneces of Haganah and Irgun actions; some were forced directly from their homes and others fled in fear at the prospect or were advised to leave by Arab forces in the region who subsequently ceded the villages to the Haganah (there was actually a good example of this on the BBC website yesterday).

As for the nation-state... Israel wanted to negotiate a Palestinian state from day one, but the Palestinians turned both Israel, and the ever precious U.N. down.

As I've said, there was no Palestinian negotiating force but an Arab League one.

The problem is that the Arabs didn't really establish their civilization on the land considered Israel-proper. The vast majority of Arabs that call themselves "Palestinians" were fairly recent immigrants to the land, mostly from the area now known as Jordan(although because Transjordan was a part of the Palestinian mandate, they were technically "Palestinians"). Jews had also been in that particular area of the Ottoman Empire that Israel was carved out of since at least the late 1400's(in Jerusalem, Hebron, and particularly in Tsfat). It's a myth that this area was some sort of vibrant civilization, because up until the late 1800's there weren't many Jews or Arabs there.

What? I'd like to here you tell that to the Crusaders who invaded in the twelfth century by which point the Arabs had been in control of Acre since the early seventh century and in Jerusalem for a similar length of time to name two examples. Perhaps you'll take my point from a higher authority - and I quote - 'A small territory that had been inhabited by an Arab majority for some 1,200 years was promised by a third party (Great Britain) as a national home to another people (the international Jewish community), the majority of whom lived in Eastern Europe' (William L. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004, 3rd ed), p 240)

But my point was really that the Israelis moved in with the permission of the rulers of the land at the time. I don't think the vast majority of Jewish inhabitants in Israel got their land by stealing it. They moved there, a conflict arose. Once the Arabs refused to negotiate, refused to divy it up and took to arms I can't say it is as emotionally appealing to hear complaints about losing property. They tried to get it al for themselves and it didn't work. The fundamental point is that they don't want Jews.

I think that is a bit of a simplistic approach to the problem. It was arguably the Jews who first sought a separation of the two communities through the agricultural settlements - moshavin and kibbutzim - of the second and third aliyot. These new migrants adopted a labour policy best summed up by their two slogans: 'conquest of land' and 'conquest of labour' which meant ensuring that only Jewish people fulfilled the jobs. This formed an essential part of the expansion of the Jewish population in the region as Arab labour was both plentiful and willing to work for lower wages than European Jews which would necessarily discourage immigration of new settlers. So this 'conquest of labour' necessarily meant the severing of ecnomic links between the two communities which naturally created tensions, particularly as Zionists were buying up land from largely absentee landlords and displacing Palestinian farmers who were no longer needed. Of course this leads to indigenous resistance, but as James Gelvin notes 'this resistance was mainly defensive, devoid of political goals, and rather haphazard' (Modern Middle East: A History, p.210). This is all prior to the First World War by the way.

I have already discussed Arab refusal to negotiate in my response to supersoulty, but just to reiterate, it is important that we draw this distinction that in 1947-8 it was not a Palestinian, but an Arab League decision not to negotiate. The Palestinians then emerge as the victims of the perfidy of foreign leaders.

How dare they defend themselves!

The problem is that the IDF often goes too far in defending Israel and kills innocent bystanders and not just Palestinian ones. I believe they have openly admitted to targetting civilian areas in Lebanon in 2006 with cluster bombs and I, unlike Xahar, will always condemn such actions even in the context of a war.

[JohnFKennedy]

Yes, it might be relevant if Israel's military force was comparable to a rabbit and all of its neighbors comparable to wolves. Rather than the other way around being more accurate.

I suppose it makes more sense in the original war for independence, back in '48; its lost its relevance now.

Not even then.

Problem with the metaphor:

1. Wolves hunt in packs whereas the surrounding Arab states were anything but united in their aims in the war of 1948 - as I have already stated in this thread, Abdullah of Jordan aimed at controlling the Palestinian segment of the partition.
2. Israel's military force was better prepared, better mobilized and better organized. The Haganah had a large reserve of Western trained and homegrown officers with military experience, an effective centralized system of command and control and in contrast to the Arab armies had short internal lines of communication enabling it to operate with greater speed and mobility.

Again I cite Avi Shlaim's 'The Debate about 1948' as my source, his conclusion on the military balance: 'In this war, as in most wars, the stronger side ultimately prevailed.'

His justification? During the unofficial stage of fighting (Dec 1947 to 14 May 1948) the Yishuv's armed forces were larger, better trained and more technically advanced. In mid May the Arab forces had between 20,000 and and 25,000 troops (regular and irregular) compared with 35,000 for the IDF not including second-line troops and by mid-July this force had expanded to 65,000, later peaking in December at 96,441 by which point its superiority ratio was nearly two to one as Arab states could not match the rate of increase.

Between May and June the IDF's greatest weakness was its inferiority in terms of firepower but this was rectified during the first truce when Israel breached a UN arms embargo to import weapons from all over Europe (particularly from Czechoslovakia) which tipped the balance in their favour.

So then does the metaphor even reflect the realities of 1948? Not really.

[JohnFKennedy]

Why the sudden silence in here?

[JohnFKennedy]

Well let's keep it here then.

[JohnFKennedy]

I think Al deleted a thread about Zimbabwe because it ended up being another discussion about Israel.  We should try to keep everything about Israel here.

I wondered why that had gone.

Anyway, I have to say I am concerned that anti-semitism and anti-Zionism seem to frequently been conflated in the modern world. The two are very very different.

[JohnFKennedy]

Someday, God willing Palestine will be free.

I'm all for a free Palestine, but not if it means eliminating Israel.  If Palestine had just taken what the UN gave them, they wouldn't be in this stateless situation.

Okay, you obviously didn't read my previous post on that matter so I'll quote the relevant section for you and say once again that there was no viable Palestinian leadership who could take what the UN 'gave' them.

Unwilling to negotiate? I would say it was rather hard for the Palestinians to negotiate at all given that the British had dismantled both the Higher Arab Committee and the Supreme Muslim Council in 1936, leaving Palestinian Arabs lacking in effective and united leadership. So who represents the Palestinian cause? The Arab League whose member states were facing mounting domestic unrest and in many cases had an intrinsic interest in there not being a viable Palestinian state: for instance Abdullah of Jordan's involvement in the 1948 war was primarily a bid to control the Palestinian part of the partition, rather than any meaningful attempt at establishing an independent Palestinian state as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has shown in his work on the 1948 war (I'll be happy to give a reference if you want). It's also not true to suggest that it has been 'the Palestinians who have backed away from the table every single time since'; certainly Palestinian negotiators have rejected proposals for peace but so too have the Israelis, for instance with the 2003 Geneva Accord.

I would further disagree with your claim that 'the Jews were perfectly willing to live side by side with Palestinians, in 1947'. This is not to say that all Jews demonstrated hostility towards Palestinians, but certainly many did. I wonder why you think all the Palestinians living in what became Israel left their homes and land? Let's not forget that the UNSCOP committee found that Jews constituted only about a third of the population and owned roughly six percent of the total land in Palestine. So what happened to those 400,000 Palestinians? Certainly they resisted - as probably anyone would if they were being forced out of their homes - but were no match for the disciplined Haganah, or the terrorist attacks of the Irgun who perpetrated some horrific acts including the Dayr Yassin massacre. Benny Morris is probably the leading expert today on the 1948 Palestinian refugee problem (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949) and he doesn't ascribe it to the orders of the Palestinian leadership (what leadership anyway?) or a planned Israeli policy but to the consequeneces of Haganah and Irgun actions; some were forced directly from their homes and others fled in fear at the prospect or were advised to leave by Arab forces in the region who subsequently ceded the villages to the Haganah (there was actually a good example of this on the BBC website yesterday).

[JohnFKennedy]

Arabs will outnumber Jews within the next 10 to 20 years, according to demographers.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05EFDA173AF936A25754C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Thanks; even though that article is 4 years old, and the information is probably even older.

Erm, so? You think there's been a massive demographic shift since then? The big thing is that the Arab population is also very young. 42.4% of the Palestinian population is under the age of 14. Also from 2007 estimates:

Birth rate: 30.99/1,000 population
Mortality rate: 3.85/1,000 population

[JohnFKennedy]

Do you know how Israel treats Jewish converts to Christianity?

Better than how Saudis treat Islam coverts to Judaism?

Answer: There aren't any.

Any guesses as to why?

Because Judaism doesn't encourage conversion.

This is true, it takes something like seven years to convert as I recall.

[JohnFKennedy]

I hope those comments aren't directed at me dead0man.

[JohnFKennedy]

I hope those comments aren't directed at me dead0man.

You'd know better than I if those comments were directed at you. 


(I wasn't thinking of you when I wrote it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't apply)

It was the latter I was enquiring about. Personally I don't think it does; I have always condemned the death of innocent people both by Palestinian terrorists and the IDF. I don't defend terrorism but I do seek to understand it. Ehud Barak made what I've always felt to be a telling statement once shortly before he became Prime Minister of Israel; when asked what he would have done had he been born a Palestinian he said that he'd probably have joined a terrorist organization. Both sides are to blame. They haven't shared equal blame throughout history obviously, there have been times when one side has been more responsible for the failure of negotiations and violence than the other and that's a fact that goes both ways. Unfortunately, it's a commonly believed myth that Israel's history is far rosier than it actually is - particularly in relation to 1947-8 where the blame must lie with both Israel and the Arab League - and that is what I've been trying to redress here. Most of my posts in this thread have been aimed at correcting historical falsehoods.

[JohnFKennedy]

I don't think anybody has denied that Israel did some funked up things early on.

Even I won't deny it.

With 1947-8 it was more about dispelling the myth that the Palestinians rejected the UN Mandate and that that is where the problem comes from which is something that you (benconstine) have said on at least one occasion.

[JohnFKennedy]

I don't think anybody has denied that Israel did some funked up things early on.

Even I won't deny it.

With 1947-8 it was more about dispelling the myth that the Palestinians rejected the UN Mandate and that that is where the problem comes from which is something that you (benconstine) have said on at least one occasion.

True, I have said that, and I believe it.

Did you not read what I had to say on this the first OR second time? Basically, the Palestinians couldn't reject the UN Mandate because there were no Palestinian leaders consulted on the matter. Rather than re-write the whole thing, I've just quoted what I put last time. Please tell me how it squares with your perception of 1947-8.

Unwilling to negotiate? I would say it was rather hard for the Palestinians to negotiate at all given that the British had dismantled both the Higher Arab Committee and the Supreme Muslim Council in 1936, leaving Palestinian Arabs lacking in effective and united leadership. So who represents the Palestinian cause? The Arab League whose member states were facing mounting domestic unrest and in many cases had an intrinsic interest in there not being a viable Palestinian state: for instance Abdullah of Jordan's involvement in the 1948 war was primarily a bid to control the Palestinian part of the partition, rather than any meaningful attempt at establishing an independent Palestinian state as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has shown in his work on the 1948 war (I'll be happy to give a reference if you want).

[JohnFKennedy]

The best general books on the Middle East I have come across are James Gelvin's Modern Middle East: A History and William Cleveland's History of the Modern Middle East. There's also D.K. Fieldhouse's Western Imperialism in the Middle East which has a good hundred pages or so on the Mandate.

[JohnFKennedy]

Unwilling to negotiate? I would say it was rather hard for the Palestinians to negotiate at all given that the British had dismantled both the Higher Arab Committee and the Supreme Muslim Council in 1936, leaving Palestinian Arabs lacking in effective and united leadership. So who represents the Palestinian cause? The Arab League whose member states were facing mounting domestic unrest and in many cases had an intrinsic interest in there not being a viable Palestinian state: for instance Abdullah of Jordan's involvement in the 1948 war was primarily a bid to control the Palestinian part of the partition, rather than any meaningful attempt at establishing an independent Palestinian state as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has shown in his work on the 1948 war (I'll be happy to give a reference if you want).

Even here though, Israel is far from the only "bad guy".  You'd think the Pali's would be really pissed at their own brothers for turning on them.  You'd expect Jews and Arabs not get along, but Arabs and Arabs?  Why is the state of Israel the one that takes all the sh**t when there are obviously more guilty parties involved?

I didn't say Israel was the only 'bad guy' and I never have. Certainly the Arab League were guilty in these circumstances, but I wouldn't necessarily say they were 'more guilty' given that Israeli forces also forced many Palestinians off their land, something which I mentioned in the original post but chose not to quote as it wasn't relevant to the point I was making to Ben.

I have qualms with your point about 'Jews and Arabs' and 'Arabs and Arabs'. Firstly, there are Jewish Arabs and secondly, because two people are of the same race doesn't automatically mean they'll get along, nor does it mean that their primary affiliation is as an 'Arab'; Pan-Arabism is hardly a potent political force in the modern world. People hold multiple and conflicting identities, it isn't quite as simple as you're point tries to suggest.

[JohnFKennedy]

This near Atheist WASP cannot support any policy that would materially increase the risk that Jews living in Israel would be subjected to mass slaughter or expulsion. Once is enough. Never again. If that issue is not at the forefront of one's mind, as one consider policy options in the region, one in my view is profoundly misguided, and yes, morally blind.

Of course the solution should not be one in which the Israeli population is slaughtered or expelled, but why should the reverse not be true as well? It seems you're placing a higher premium on the life of an Israeli than that of a Palestinian. Is it the turn of the Palestinians for a genocide then?

[JohnFKennedy]

This near Atheist WASP cannot support any policy that would materially increase the risk that Jews living in Israel would be subjected to mass slaughter or expulsion. Once is enough. Never again. If that issue is not at the forefront of one's mind, as one consider policy options in the region, one in my view is profoundly misguided, and yes, morally blind.

Of course the solution should not be one in which the Israeli population is slaughtered or expelled, but why should the reverse not be true as well? It seems you're placing a higher premium on the life of an Israeli than that of a Palestinian. Is it the turn of the Palestinians for a genocide then?

Why on God's Green Earth would you think  I advocate THAT? In any event, there is no mass genocide of Palestinians occurring, nor expulsion from where they live. Indeed, unlike Christians on the West Bank (almost all have left), Arabs living in Israel seem to find it quite tolerable.

In 1948 masses of Palestinians were displaced by Israeli forces and I don't think that the Palestinian populations of Gaza and the West Bank find it quite tolerable.

[JohnFKennedy]

I'm not saying it couldn't have been created out of Germany, I'm saying that it would be stupid to create in the back yard of the people that just got finished rounding you all up for easy killing.  Using hindsight, sure it might seem like the Jews would have been safer surrounded by sane, modern, western Germans instead of, well, a less sane and modern people, but they didn't get to use hindsight.  Germans didn't seem particularly sane to the Jews at the time anyway.  And it's not like the rest of Europe was Jew friendly.  If you're going to be surrounded by people that hate you, you might as well do it in your homeland, surrounded by people stuck in the 11th Century than in the middle of bunch of different modern nations with large Armies.

You really do take a dim view of Arabs don't you?

How are you defining 'modern' here?