POLITICS JULY 1, 2009
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"I mean, in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above--above the world, he's sort of God." These drug-addicted words come from Evan Thomas, a longtime editor at Newsweek. He uttered them on Chris Matthews's MSNBC show. Such words would wreak havoc on any person's ego, even Barack Obama's. It also would enrage his enemies.
After all, the president has told us that he is a mere student of history, and that he is.
But history these days is no longer a discipline inclined to defend the truthfulness of its claims or the reasonableness of its arguments or the plausibility of its conclusions. More and more, history has become a competition between and among narratives, self-consciously disdainful of what we used to think of as fact. In this intellectual competition, the losers almost always win or, at least, they win the "moral argument." Not in real history, mind you, but in many a Western professor's classroom. And, sometimes, in an American president's mind.
The truth is that Barack Obama has a penchant for these narratives and yet an inclination to rise above them. Two grand but antithetical stories about the same problem, awaiting him and his Olympian skill for the discovery of "common ground": That is Obama's favorite script. He regards himself as a kind of unprecedented referee between histories and philosophies. He likes to think that he can see what others cannot see and that, therefore, they must come to him if they wish to live in peace and with meaning. He did this with race in the Philadelphia speech, articulating what blacks see from their end of the periscope and what whites see from theirs. (Until, that is, he had to dump his minister from the campaign truck as a matter of survival. "Common ground" is sometimes not discovered so much as invented, or imposed.) A man of not especially discriminate empathy, he sees himself in the Whitmanesque sense of containing multitudes.
In addressing American intelligence and security professionals at the National Archives, the president again aimed at bridging differences by showing that apparent contradictions are not contradictions at all and that everything will go together, if only for as long as he is speaking. National security that never compromises national values? No problem. National values that guarantee national security? Say it and it will be done. Yes, we have values that elevate and restrict us at once, the ideal of free men and women that procedurally protects also the guilty and the wicked--and never mind that, absent energetic domestic and international defenses, these principles would be outmaneuvered and outclassed on both fronts. And again at Notre Dame, the same above-it-all structure of rhetorical conciliation was applied by Obama to the subject of abortion. "Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words." Nice enough. But the debate on abortion will not be so tidily retired. All of this is rising above but not really reconciling.
I suppose that President Obama thinks that in Cairo he bridged many narratives. He certainly appeared to try: on the one hand, on the other, us and them, more or less equal in our stories. But real history is the telling and interpretation of actual happenings. It is specific, concrete, particular; it eats analogies and commonalities for breakfast; and it requires what used to be called knowledge--correct facts and warranted interpretations of them. From the standpoint of knowledge, not every assertion has equal weight, even if it is deeply felt.
There are two basic narratives to the nearly century-old Jewish and Arabs-of-Palestine dispute. The sheer truthfulness of these narratives is so unbalanced that Obama or his panel of oddly partisan experts must have felt obliged to tamper with real history. What is most brazen or, at best, bizarre in Obama's historical recitation is the stark omission of the whole Zionist enterprise. Instead, he chose to understand the Jewish presence in Palestine as a sort of restitution for the Holocaust. For the president, the balancing of claims--and they must always be balanced; he does not tolerate asymmetries, which would make his divine even-handedness impossible--requires distortion of what actually happened. First off was to diminish the determination of the Jewish people through the ages, and especially since the age of nationalism in the mid-nineteenth century, to reclaim their homeland, to bring its very earth out of desolation and restore its dispersed sons and daughters to Zion--all this not as a reparation, but as a right. By the time World War II--before the Holocaust, that is--began, there were already more than 500,000 Jews in Palestine. Most of them had arrived as their palpable reply to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, to the approval by the League of Nations of a British mandate for a Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1922, to the recommendations of the Peel Commission for a two-state settlement. None of this enters the president's text, not even a hint of it, perhaps because it might muddle the clarity of the equal-claim argument.
What perhaps the president doesn't recall from the history he studied is that Jewish sovereignty in postwar Palestine was only one of several rearrangements contemplated for the vast territories that had been governed by the Ottoman Empire, now expired. From this land mass emerged the states of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, North Yemen, and various other adjustments of frontiers on behalf of the Wilsonian principle of the self-determination of nations. These countries, composing almost the entire Fertile Crescent, were vouchsafed to the Arabs, their first experiments at self-government in history. (Did these experiments work? That's for each of us to judge.) Tiny Palestine was intended for the Jews. They were already at work in the desert, in the swamps, in their kibbutzim, in their new cities, including Tel Aviv, in their bourgeois enterprises, in their universities and research institutions. And, moreover, they had revived their ancient language, making it a living tongue with ancient cadence and modern purpose. Hitler had exactly nothing to do with this revolution. Is all this not a revolution worthy of presidential recognition?
When Obama attributes the establishment of Israel, and also Israel's fear that the Iranian government and many Arabs would quite happily visit another devastation on it, to the Holocaust, he is in fact accepting Dr. Ahmadinejad's analysis of the Zionist triumph and also one of the tenets of Palestinian rejectionism, which is that the Palestinians are correct in their phobia that they have paid the price for what the Nazis did to the Jews.
If the president does not grasp Israel's history, he should be more modest in his judgments. Here's just one huge fact that does not fit into the president's sweeping explanation for the success of the Jewish state: Why did more than 800,000 Jews return to Zion from their thousands of years of exile in the Muslim world beginning with the very morn of independence? Surely this rupturing of communal life dating back, in some cases, three millennia was not Holocaust-related.
"On the other hand"--remember, there must be symmetries--the president declared in his parallel reading to the Jewish catastrophe that "it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people--Muslims and Christians--have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation." Obama went on: "Many wait in refugee camps ... they endure the daily humiliations--large and small--that come with occupation ... the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own." Nor should America turn its back.
But it should also perceive that Palestinian history and Arab history, as written by themselves and told and retold to schoolchildren, is a blame-the-other history. A keen observer of the West Bank and Gaza describes a teacher in a Bethlehem school and his thoughts about his pupils:
He began to read through their short essays on the demise of the Ottoman Empire. He spent a great deal of his time, too much of it, angry with these children. He tried not to be, but he couldn't stand to listen to them when they rolled through the political cliches of the poor, victimized Arab nation, subjugated by everyone from the Crusaders and the Mongols to the Turks and the British, all the way to the intifada. It wasn't wrong to see the Arabs as victims of a harsh history, but it was a mistake to assume that they bore no responsibility for their own sufferings.
This meditation is from Omar Yussef, the hero of three detective fictions by Matt Beynon Rees, this one called The Collaborator of Bethlehem. We are in a bad way when a novelist, even a skilled novelist, has a more secure and sophisticated hold on the realities of Palestine than the president's tutors.
There is a little bit of razzle-dazzle even in how Obama treats numbers. It's not only Muslims who have suffered in occupied Palestine. Also Christians. But probably less than 2 percent of the population--maybe 45,000 souls--in the West Bank are Christian, a steep decline attributable mostly to the radical Islamicization of the territories. Fewer and fewer Christians can survive the mayhem around them, and they go to where other Christians from the Arab world have escaped before them, to Australia, for example, and to Dearborn, Michigan. The remaining Christians live terrorized lives, and Israel the occupier is actually their shield. (In Gaza by now, there may be as few as 2,000 Christians. ) A similar looseness with numbers is in the president's bald announcement that there are seven million Muslims in the United States. QED. That number shouldn't upset anyone. Still, I believe that Obama is--how shall I put this?--breaking demographic ground.
I, too, am for a two-state solution. I always have been. As the president said, "many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state"; he should have said "most" rather than "many." For most Israelis recognize that need, and their governments have tried to negotiate toward that end. Alas, Obama cannot and does not say that most or even many Palestinians recognize the need for a Jewish state or even, for that matter, the Israeli state. Here there is no symmetry, alas, that will serve. The most he can say is that, "privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away." Why does he not say "many Palestinians"? Perhaps because it would be stark deception. So which Muslims? The democratic but, alas, irrelevant and tolerant Muslims of Indonesia? Or Cairenes, especially the intellectuals, who have lived under a peace treaty with Jerusalem for all of three decades, but have not quite accommodated themselves to the existence of Israel?
The Arabs of Palestine have been violently opposed to the existence of two states since the beginning. But, since the president goes back only six decades, I will abide by his timelines.
On May 14, 1948, Lieutenant General Sir Alan Cunningham, the seventh and last British High Commissioner, struck the Union Jack from Jerusalem's Government House (and, later that day, from his departing ship in Haifa Bay) as a solitary Scottish bagpiper played the joyless Highland Lament. The Partition Plan for Palestine, approved by the United Nations General Assembly on November 29, 1947, had effectively brought the Crown's self-mortification with the end of the Mandate. Read carefully the delicately negotiated words of the Plan: The mandate was to be split into a "Jewish state" in Palestine, mostly desert, and an "Arab state" in Palestine. This is the two-state solution that used to be called "partition," which the Jews accepted and the Arabs did not. The fact is that no one stood up to receive the gift of internationally recognized independence for the Arabs in Palestine, and no surprise. There was little national sentiment among them. The privileged family of Edward Said, like other privileged families, had moved to Cairo already in late 1947.
Syrian, Egyptian, and Jordanian armies were marched into what had been designated Arab Palestine so they might accrue for their own countries what had been assigned to the locals and whatever else might be carved out of the new Jewish state by war. In the north, the country's Arabs fought mostly for Syria. To the east, they fought mostly as brawlers for King Abdullah's British-trained and British-commanded Arab Legion, which ended up controlling the West Bank and soon annexed it to Jordan itself. In the south, what little provincial participation there was, they were on the side of Egypt, personified in those days by the comically rotund King Farouk, fez on his head, who would govern Gaza--no one in, no one out--until the colonels bounced him and his throne in 1952. So much for Palestinian nationalism.
When Yasir Arafat founded the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1963, he set it not at all against the land's Arab occupiers but against the Jewish state. There was no thought then of a two-state solution. I believe that whatever mouthing there has been among the Palestinians about two states is like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, the EU and various Americans eagerly playing the puppeteer. No one had the courage among the Arabs to say what Chaim Weizman told his fellow Zionists: We shall accept a state the size of a tablecloth. And, of course, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert offered their Arab neighbors much more. In fact, 97 percent of the West Bank and much of Jerusalem. They had the backing of their publics, too. But Israelis are no longer so amiable and cooperative. With good and sufficient reason.
I suppose that if so many Israelis can absolve the Palestinian Arabs of their history (or the lack thereof), Barack Obama can do so, as well. After all, pain they have plenty. How could it be otherwise? Looking across the 60-year-old armistice lines and what they see of Israel on television (also, ever less in person) is the absolute negation of the lack of progress in their own lives, both individual and communal. To be sure, any people that allowed a mountebank like Arafat to hijack its already flimsy national aspirations will be punished, not by God Almighty, but by what the rais and his successors have together sown: the weeds of wild violence, unsurpassed corruption, hatred of the neighbor, the confusion of history, and falsehood, and an allergy to true learning. All of these are, to be ruthlessly truthful, intrinsic to the Palestinian inheritance.
It was more than a bit disconcerting to hear the President give strict instructions to Israel via an Arab audience when his admonition to Muslims was actually quite docile and fuzzy. One vaporous instance: "The richness of religious diversity must be upheld ... fault lines must be closed among Muslims as well, as the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq." From Obama's mouth to God's ears. Or more precisely, perhaps, from Obama's mouth to Obama's ears.
But "it is time for the settlements to stop." Which settlements? Does the president believe that several particular Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem are "settlements"? Fess up. If they aren't, and the towns abutting the armistice lines aren't either, the president may have a deal. If not, he's in a fight against real history. And, believe me, I am mortified by many of the settlements. I think they are dangerous for the Jewish state. But not as dangerous as leaving the West Bank in unreliable Palestinian hands. Like in Gaza. But what does the president think is the consequence if Netanyahu actually stops construction in the settlements, however described and defined? What does Obama think is the next step? Will the Palestinians be more forthcoming, and with what? Will the next step be to coerce Israel into taking in some Palestinians who are, 60 years after, still defined as refugees although they live only ten miles away from where their great-grandmothers made falafel?
So, in the end, the grand conciliator violated his own principle and spoke asymmetrically: He was very tough on Israel, but he was vague to the Palestinians and to the Arabs. The president was not at all specific about what he wished from people who are still enemies of the Jewish state. Every Israeli concession requires a reciprocal concession, and not just words. But even words are difficult to extract from the Palestinian Authority, the so-called moderates. Mahmoud Abbas said only a fortnight ago that he had only to wait on what Israel surrenders. No reproach from anybody in Washington, except a few honest journalists.
There was one startling passage in Obama's speech that very few commentators have noticed, perhaps because they also don't know their history. "Islam has always been a part of America's story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second president, John Adams, wrote, 'The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.'" Now, as Michael Oren recounts in his magisterial history of America's enmeshment in the region, Power, Faith, and Fantasy, the fact is that this treaty, which imposed a ransom of money and ships on the Americans, was a fraud. Moreover, within four years, Tripoli captured another U.S. ship and went on to take into captivity other American vessels and their crews. Suffice it to say that wars, declared by the Pasha of Tripoli and undeclared, continued with more death and more ransom, until 1815. Let it be hoped that the Treaty of Tripoli in which President Obama delights so much will not be a precedent for the agreement he wants to forge between Israel and the Palestinians or between the United States and Iran. It is also a scandal that no one on his intimate staff told him the facts--if, indeed, they knew them--about the settlements with the Barbary Pirates. They are a precedent for nothing, except cheap getting-to-yes ecumenicism.
Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief of The New Republic.
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65 comments
Superb. A bullseye. A pity that the Spine can't ascend to these heights more often.
- teppy
June 12, 2009 at 2:31pm
Shorter Marty: I hate settlements, I really really do, except that I refuse to urge Israel to do anything about them until I can find a set of Palestinian interlocutors who are acceptable to the most right-wing Israeli government available (if and when that ever happens). And I really feel sorry for Palestinians, and wish they could have a state somewhere, except that they are just a bunch of dangerous, deluded savages and will need to wait for one until a magic equilibrium exists and they can get their self-determination. And Obama is all so full of himself when he tells Israelis that he is looking for concrete concessions from them but only makes vague demands on Arabs (except that Obama's public demans are pretty solid, only not couched in the kind of stern language that Mary approves of). May I suggest that it is Obama and his advisers (Jewish and gentile), and not Marty and his ilk in Israel and the American Jewish community, who are living in the real world of hard choices and competing nation-states and narratives, rather than in a fantasy world in which your side never has to make concessions or compromises for anyone.
- wildboy
June 12, 2009 at 2:45pm
With all due respect to Israel's sense of its moral and historical right to part of Palestine, the problem now, and for a hundred years, is how to get the Arabs to overcome their sense of grievance and humiliation and accept the Jewish state. May I suggest that the best chance for achieving that objective does not lie within the power of Israel. It can be achieved by Europe, however, even though it would require an acknowledgment on Europe's part that they (the Allied powers) were wrong to give someone else's land away no matter what the motive (which were mixed) and that they therefore have a moral responsibility to compensate the Palestinian people for their losses of honor, land, lives, and treasure -- all of which were perfectly predictable, and were in fact predicted, during the diplomatic discussions leading up to the Balfour Declaration. Isn't it possible that the Palestinians and the Israelis are both right, and that their two rights make a wrong -- or rather point to a wrong -- that was committed by another people on another continent a hundred years ago?
- Luke Lea
June 12, 2009 at 3:31pm
Great article, Marty. I learned a lot from your highly detailed erudition on this topic. Many thanks.
- JackR
June 12, 2009 at 3:51pm
A rather shallow history - no? What, pray tell, was the impetus behind the Zionist movement of the 19th century Marty? Was it not to protect Jews from pogroms and persecution? Isn't the Holocaust precisely what Herzl feared all along? It's, at best, an uncharitable reading of Obama's speech to take him to be implying that the holocaust was some sort of specific event, and not the product of hundreds of years of European anti-Semitism. This may, regretfully, play into Ahmadnejad's talking points, but that's too bad. As you say, certain facts can't be argued away.
- benberger
June 12, 2009 at 4:08pm
You nailed Marty on that one, wildboy. Get a grip Marty, it was not a policy proposal. It was a speech designed specifically to build confidence in Arab minds that, America is an honest broker for the peace process. What the hell do you want Marty? A dishonest broker saying one thing publicly, but winking and nodding to Israel privately? From all the whining coming from your ilk, Marty, I am developing a very strong suspicion that the whole Israeli Right, from right of center on, really don't want peace like they always claim. If you guys could cry so hard about freezing settlements, not dismantling, but just a confidence-building temporary freeze, I can imagine why the Palestinians believe that peace talks is just a ploy to keep delaying until Israel has gobbled up the rest of the West Bank. I don't think I blame them anymore because I am slowly beginning to believe so, too.
- O.S
June 12, 2009 at 4:14pm
The problem with the Zionist view of Palestine as "A land without a people for a people without a land" (above and beyond the ignoring of the Palestinians as a people to begin with) is how generally does one apply it? If the Jews have lasting title to Palestine that extends back a couple of thousand years, then what about the Native Americans, who were forcefully expropriated right here in a far-nearer time frame? Seems like you can't have one without the other, if you're looking to apply a consistent approach to such issues. Somehow, I don't think the same advocates for a Jewish "right" to Palestine across time would endorse a right for Native Americans to get their land back, even though you only need to go back a few centuries to find that expropriation.
- john smith
June 12, 2009 at 7:48pm
Of course, for Martin and his ilk, the narrative of the Zionists and their supporters is the only true one. Obama is making an honest effort to get both sides to face hard truths and come to terms with historical realities. One fact is that Israel exists and always will. Another is that the Palestinians did get the shaft with the establishment of the Jewish state and deserve redress and justice. Stopping the expansion of illegal settlements is moral, and hopefully will prevent the growing system of apartheid that now exists in the occupied lands, with two sets of law and justice for two peoples. Israel does not need to justify itself or its existence. But it needs to stop the actions that make a two state impossible. Unfortunately, Israelis continue to hold on to the fantasy that they can keep taking land, penning in the Palestinians and somehow placate them through force or economically. Obama sees the true intentions of the Israelis and he is not dishonest enough to go along.
- jake robbin
June 12, 2009 at 11:12pm
What about the Arab world's offer of peace, recognition and normal relations if Israel returned to its 1967 borders? Granted, the offer was only made out of certainty that it would be rejected, but you can't argue that the Arabs haven't made any grand gestures. Israel has always had the power to improve its diplomatic standing and its security, but has yet refused to make the necessary sacrifices. Obama's speech was hard on Israel for precisely that reason. Waiting for the miraculous appearance of a modern, civil Palestinian Authority to negotiate with achieves nothing. Israel must take the (painful) initiative, or it will continue to suffer along with the Palestinians from this miserable status quo.
- Psychomonkey
June 13, 2009 at 1:59am
A brilliant expose going to the roots of the link between the Jewish People and its ancient- now- modern land . There was never a period in the two thousand year span of exile of the Jewish people when the area of " Palestine" was devoid of a Jewish presence . In the sixteenth and seventeenth century Jewish learning and culture flourished in Safed where thousands of Jews maintained a vibrant community . Maimonidies , a towering figure in Jewish philosophy and Jewish jurisprudence came to the Holy Land in the middle ages and is buried in Tiberias . All these preceeded the Holocaust by many hundreds of years . They also preceeded the advent of the United States of America. And they occured in times when there was no Muslim entity in the Holy Land .
- efraim halevy
June 13, 2009 at 3:19am
I mean, in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above--above the world, he's sort of God." That is the way the media has treated Obama since the pimaries began. Marty nails it. Bill CLinton helped negotiate a 2 state solution in 2000. There could be apeace in the middle east at any time the Palestinians agree to live in peace with Israel. But they won't. And Obama accepts their false version of the situation insted of the truth. And a compliant media refuses to call him on it.
- JohnB
June 13, 2009 at 9:13am
Just what we need---more obsession about Israel. Rich American Jews and evangelicals who prattle on about the holy land continually spew agitprop about this crappy piece of land smaller than New Jersey halfway around the world and demand that it be our obsession as well. It is not that I like the Palestinians or anything--it is hard to find a less-worthy group of people who aspire to statehood than they are. I just wish that Israeli partisans would quit hijacking the foreign policy of my country. We should cut off all aid to countries in that region of the world and let the chips fall where they may. It isn't our problem.
- Marvin Keene
June 13, 2009 at 9:43am
Marty, It's good to see that you can still occasionally produce a piece that rises above the invective of a senile old man in an infirmary. This was a fascinating read. May I offer the humble suggestion that blogging is simply not the right medium for you. It plays to the worst part of your temperament while longer works allow you to be more judicious. I'd also be curious to read any rebuttals if they are out there. My personal problem with your argument is that the religious and historical justification for "the Zionist enterprise," as you put it, is not something that carries any weight with people outside of the Jewish heritage.
- B.P.
June 13, 2009 at 11:32am
I agree with the article, but judging from the comments, it does not state the problem clearly enough. The matter is not what finally triggered active Jewish quest for their own country, whether it were Holocaust or pogroms or thousands of years of antisemitism. As a nation Jews had a right for their homeland all along, a right to their homeland at the geographic location where their historical roots lie. In this they are not so different from Palestinians. Indeed, we could have similarly denied the Palestinian right for their own homeland, since their nationalistic aspirations rose only after State of Israel came to being.
- Chris
June 13, 2009 at 12:07pm
Evan Thomas's comment was ridiculous and not based on anything Obama has ever said or done. Thomas seems to be getting more and more staid, conservative and unhinged as the years roll by. His grandfather must be spinning in his grave over some of the things the current Mr. Thomas has said and written.
- ejs
June 13, 2009 at 12:46pm
Two points: Israel has a legitimate claim to its state and this legitimacy is based on the various League resolutions after WWI, not on the Zionist myth(even rabid Zionist Jacksondyer says it is part legend, part myth) nor on the Holocaust. Its claim is thus equal to but not greater than(nor does it need to be) those of Syria, Jordan et.al. Israel has a reasonable claim to hold on to the Territories until the terrorist threat is eliminated. What it does not have a right to is to support 400,000 Israeli settlers in Gaza and the West Bank. Why not, the, withdraw the settlers and leave the Army until a treaty is agreed? Among the many advantages would be a vast reduction of the strain on the Army, whose ptimary duty has been protecting the settlers.
- kaboom
June 13, 2009 at 1:21pm
Marty, I think that you got it back to front on Zionism and the Holocaust. Wall-to-wall Jewish support of the Zionist enterprise is a direct consequence of the Holocaust, and until the Holocaust, the overwhelming majority of Jews were either anti-Zionist or non-Zionist, thus it is false to claim that Zionism before the Holocaust was any kind of expression of some widespread yearning among Jews to return to their ancient homeland. Give me a break, Marty! Before the Holocaust, Zionism was a highly fractured tiny minority movement among the 16 million Jews outside of Palestine. The other point is that notwithstanding the five hundred thousand Jews in Palestine on the eve of World War II, the world would have never awarded even a square inch of Palestine to the Jews, but for the Holocaust. Not to mention the fact that the composition of UN membership in 1947 was 'slightly' different from its later, post-colonial composition, or the fact that the Brits were very quick on the uptake to do an elegant backflip on the Balfour declaration and on the very purpose of their League of Nations mandate, when it begam to dawn on them, in the early 1920-s, which side their bread was really buttered on, so it is a disingenuous sleight-of-hand to refer to the early post-World War I British position on the Mandate as anything but a soon to close small window of opportunity to jump-start the Holy Land Zionist enterprise in earnest, needless to say in the teeth of vociferous local Arab opposition. So whilst the rhetorical flourish of Obama may indeed have muddied some fine distinctions, BHO in fact hit the nail on the head re the indubitably direct connection between the Holocaust and the existence of the State of Israel today.
- Mike
June 13, 2009 at 3:20pm
Perhaps marty peretz and the rest of his ilk could have taken all of this into consideration before they supported obama in the election. American jews who cared about the survival of israel had a choicem MCcain
- bill pearlman
June 13, 2009 at 4:51pm
I think supporters of Israel fail to see the grave danger that Israel now finds itself in. In understanding America's dealings with Israel it is important to keep the focus on America, not the middle east. American opinions and actions will be based on events in American culture and politics. America is in general much less aware or interested in International news or culture than say Europe. Several events in recent American history and culture are develops not necessarily to the advantage of Israel. Firstly America has perhaps at no other time since World War I been so anti-Wilsonian. Since the recent Bush presidency America has been almost universally hostile to independence movements. The answer has been no to the Kurds, no to the Tibetans, no to the Tamils, no to Taiwanese, and now even to statehood for DC. America has gotten out of the indpendence business almost without exception. This would seem to apply to the Palestinians. Unfortunately for Israel by refusing to recognize the independence of the Palestinians, Israel is careening towards a majority Muslim state from which they must declare their independence. And, as covered in the above paragraph, we just don't do that anymore. Secondly the rise of the Christian nationalism movement and the strident partisan position taken by many Christian religious leaders have made a large portion of the Country hyper vigilant against the concept of a theocracy, no matter how nominal. I certainly would never swear allegiance to America as a Christian nation. It is repugnant enough to recognize Muslim majority nations as Islamic, but at least the vast majority of the residents are Muslim. I have absolutely no interest in recognizing Israel as a Jewish state under any circumstances. This demand of the Palestinians, combined with threats to outlaw protesting the formation of Israel, to remove the right of citizenship of Israeli Arabs are threatening to cleave Israel from the us category and firmly entrench it them category. Further Israeli demands that they have a unquestionable right to build in established settlements while Gaza is kept in the stone ages simply defies any sense of justice. Virtually no one in San Diego could buy a house here after finishing college and only about 20 percent could ever afford a house here. Yet we are told that settlers in the occupied territories should have options that are beyond the wildest dreams of our own children? What's up with that? I can understand that from the Israeli point of view things are viewed very differently. But it would be a mistake not to recognize how things are viewed from America if you want to influence America.
- Robert Lee Hotchkiss, Jr.
June 13, 2009 at 8:11pm
... which is close to what I would say: whyever would President Obama think that he should recite in Cairo a detailed history of the Jewish presence in Israel/Palestine and an explanation for how the Jews are really really entitled to what they want? what school of diplomacy would that speech represent? sounds like the W school to me.
- Mark Dwyer
June 13, 2009 at 11:19pm
Marty, Arafat did not create the PLO in 1963. The PLO was created in 1964 as the result of an Arab summit in East Jerusalem, mainly with the backing of Nasser's Egypt. The leader of the PLO was then Ahmed Shukeiry, a Palestinian mercenary diplomat who once represented Saudi Arabia. Arafat's Fatah was in competition with the PLO until he took it over in 1969. I hope that your knowledge of Zionist history is better than that of Palestinian history.
- Thomas Mitchell, PhD
June 14, 2009 at 2:23am
Thank you, Mar Peretz, for the thorough review of the historical facts of this case. I will print it out and give it to some of my Egyptian students who know absolutely nothing of what is real about Israel or, for that matter, for much of their own history. As Gore Vidal observed in one of his more recent works, "Where there are lies, there is not reality." Being out of touch with reality carries a very deadly price-tag. So, please continue to keep it real for all of us!
- Carol Crumlish
June 14, 2009 at 6:21am
Whew. Mr. Marty sho' did wear some highfalutin people clean out...and then some. But can plain facts enlighten a mind that has been carefully focused thru the lens of politically correct cultural diversity? Not likely. It is a new kind of Pogrom Gulag burning over the Soul of every race and nation. Welcome to the jungle
- historyishistory
June 14, 2009 at 10:09am
Marty, check Hotair.com. Sarah Palin was on Wolf Blitzer yesterday reaffirming her commitment to supporting -- and protecting, if necessary -- Israel. At the same time, your boy Obama is supporting and protecting the mullahs while trashing the Israelis over the non-issue of the settlements. But during the election, you described Palin as 'attractive in a Macy's shopgirl kind of way.' You gave this anti-Israel, anti-semitic empty suit cover and money during the election, helping assuage the concerns of worried American Jews. YOU are a big part of the problem and if you would just acknowledge it maybe, just maybe you could regain some credibility with the reality-based community.
- CFB
June 14, 2009 at 10:24am
I agree with O.S. on his introductory comment. Obama looks like a parent who, upon hearing an older sibling complain that the parent always takes the younger sibling's side in disputes, tries to prove to the contrary and maintain the validity of the parent's role by doing the opposite. I read into Marty's research that it is pointless to even try. Maybe, but what else can be done?
- Nusholtz
June 14, 2009 at 10:31am
Benberger Marty's point is that Zionism is NOT just a modern phenomenon. It is the logical result of thousands of years of exile. Throughout Jewish history, Jews have yearned to return to the land of their ancestors. That's why at the end of every Passover seder, the cry is "Next year in Jerusalem!" It is true that European anti-Semitism played a vital role in getting Herzl to found the modern Zionist movement. It is also true that without the singular crime of the Holocaust, it is unlikely that the establishment of a legal, internationally recognized state of Israel would have happened the way it did. It might have happened eventually, but it might not. But none of this should take away from the central premise, which is that Israel is more than just an exercise of European guilt over the Holocaust. Implying this, as Marty says, is bound to encourage Arabs in their delusions.
- bpickar
June 14, 2009 at 12:21pm
Please accept my apology for assuming that the New Republic was a todey for the Obama Administration, in uncritical acceptance of his Mideast policy. A fellow "dhimmi" salutes the Martin Peretz "Narrative Dissonance" article, July 09 issue. Judith
- Judith Ishkanian
June 14, 2009 at 2:36pm
Yesterday, Obama draws a moral equivalence between the Holocaust and "Palestinians" who cannot abide the existence of The Jewish Entity feeling aggrieved and victimized. Today, he praises the "robust dialog" going on in Iran (perhaps the riots protesting the obviously rigged election?) and implies, Jimmy Carter-like, that the elections there have been remotely fair or free. Is he really that ignorant, that gullible? Does he know the truth and think that this sort of happy talk will inspire Hamas and the Iranian mullahs to civilized behavior? Is he that committed to pacifist orthodoxy that he thinks all cultures are equal and that "just talking to each other" will will miraculously defuse deep set antipathies? Or is he so wedded to the hard left ideology of structural antipathy to the West/America/Israel and so pro everything else that he sympathizes, again, Carter-like, with the most violent and virulent of the enemies of his enemies? Chavez, mi amigo! Praise for the Middle Eastern tyrannies that stand against and suppress every ideal of freedom, dignity and rights of the individual he supposedly espouses! And down with the only democracy in the entire region, because quaratining the Hamas bomb throwers is no different ("on the other hand") from Auschwitz. Whatever combination of the above is the case, it should now be clear that this hollow man we have elected as our philosopher king has at least no sympathy at all for Israel and more probably has the righteous antipathy of today's Left to its very existence. He thinks the Israelis are the moral equivalent of the Nazis. Is that not the logical extension of his "on the other hand" moral equivalence? If Obama, the exalted world citizen, is above mere nationalism and therefore even a remote affinity with America, how much less does he care about the existence of Israel, the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany?
- Victor Erimita
June 14, 2009 at 3:49pm
I believe a part of Obama's narrative dissonance problem is that he has a twenty-something speech writer. His foreign policy speeches are well crafted and the words sound good together, but the message often does not work because it does not respect the authority and perspective of honest history.
- eliz
June 14, 2009 at 3:59pm
"they (the Allied powers) were wrong to give someone else's land away no matter what the motive" says Luke Lea in his/her posting. It wasn't British or European land, it was always the homeland of the Jewish people. Neither Mr.Balfour nor somebody else gava away to the Jews something, that did not belong to them for about 3500 years.
- Norman Cone
June 14, 2009 at 4:00pm
Mr Peretz is distorting history. In this case, he is distorting a very recent speech given by Obama. Once again, I'm daring all his critics including this coward Peretz to point directly to the part of the speech where he said Israel began with the Holocaust. Obama mentioned a sad history of the Jewish people over CENTURIES (when did holocaust happen?) CULMINATING in the antisemitism in Europe. For Christ sake, Peretz, Krauthermar, and several hawkish Jews live in their own minds and hear things in their own warped minds no other sane person hears. We listened to the same speech, yet Peretz and Krauthermar and their followers heard Obama link the genesis of Israel to the holocaust when he did not!
- Eric Bottomwalk
June 14, 2009 at 4:13pm
And Peretz told us to vote for this Orwellian masterpiece that now occupies the White House?!!
- Noreen
June 14, 2009 at 4:20pm
"Narrative Dissonance", indeed...what a relief to hear a rebuttal of major elements of President Obama's Cairo address by (of all people) editor-in-chief Marty Peretz in (of all publications) the New Republic. I guess it just goes to show that, even in the loftiest bastions of the liberal press, some can still discern the forest for the trees. Thanks, Marty...
- Raconteur
June 14, 2009 at 5:09pm
Why must we insist upon being right even at the expense of moving forward? We have our history books, they tell our history, we have our "revisionists" they revise the inaccuracies in the stories we've told about ourselves for generations. What difference does it all make when it comes to how we can move forward on some level of reconciliation between the nations and people? Martin Peretz is so insistent on making sure that "our" version of history is the only authentic history that he cannot allow the possibility of another's narrative. If, Obama allowed some element of the Arab narrative to enter his speech, what difference does it make to us whether it reflects history as we tell it? The problem with Peretz and so many on our side of the story is that we spend our time asserting inaccuracies in Arab narratives and thus we enter a never ending cycle of denials and rebuttals. Let them have their story. Let us have ours. Then, from the point of realities on the ground, in the present day decide how we will move forward. Will we agree to a demilitarized Palestinian state? Will we negotiate territorial compromises? Of course. Will other arrangements be considered regardless of historical claims, events, rights or differences of interpretation? Of course. Can we deny that there has been Palestinian suffering? Can we deny that some portion of it, certainly in the past 20 years, has been the result of the occupation? If we can't allow the Palestinians that narrative then we haven't paid much attention to our own history and our own short-comings. Perhaps because we Jews are a people of history and it shapes us and informs our destiny, we can't refuse others their historical narratives. Recognizing the right to another's narrative is not denying the authenticity of our own. Here’s what I’ve learned from my experience with community organizing--our president after all is the community organizer in chief–the first step to engaging a people is letting them tell their narrative. The next step is validating their narrative without judging its veracity. Then, from a place of validation and reconciliation, not from denial and refutations, a foundation is built for a future that transcends the failures of the past.
- RS
June 14, 2009 at 6:03pm
The plain fact is that Palestinians refuse to accept the existence of a Jewish state and are willing to employ terror to back up their beliefs. This is incontroverible fact. No peace is possible until they change their beliefs. No Palestinian state is possible until they change their beliefs. An honest broker would speak the hard truth that Palestinians are their own worst enemies in this regard. An honest broker would tell the Palestinians that there will be no false peace or pressure on Israel until they publicly acknowledge Israel's right to exist. Until then, everything else Obama has to say on the subject is just so much hot air. Cairo's already warm enough this time of year: no one needed Obama to contribute his ego-boosting one-man global warming initiative to the mix.
- Jim B
June 15, 2009 at 12:45am
The idea of "ownership" of land is peculiar - to trace is to a Divine Being is absurd. Jews from Europe engaged in acts of terror against both the *native* Arab population and the British, who were elsewhere busy fighting the 3rd Reich. This essay is absolute drek in its historical balance. Jews held sovereignty in "the Land of Israel" for less than 400 years, compared with over 1,000 for Muslims. Yet all the divisions of religion [absurd, Stone Age beliefs] and nationalism [Medieval ones] simply need to give way to something like a secular humanism if we are to seek solutions based on the interests, rather than merely the extant positions, of parties in conflict.
- Kevin O Maolchathaigh
June 15, 2009 at 3:47am
I had a long chat about all of this with two Muslim-American friends this weekend (both of Pakistani origin). Both are fervent Democrats and strong Obama supporters. Their verdict -- with the lives of friends and relatives literally hanging in the balance -- is that this business of trying to talk nice to the Islamists to lessen their sense of grievance is a fool's errand. The Islamists only respect force, sadly. As Americans, we need to stop believing that we can placate their sense of grievance with respectful talk. We can't.
- Bob
June 15, 2009 at 9:58am
OK, there are a few liberal Jews who are beginning to question BHO's means and ends. Good. But the thing to remember about Peretz is that unless BHO gives the Nazi salute on Face The Nation, Peretz will be flacking for the Dems. in 2010 and endorsing Obama in 2012.
- Dan Friedman
June 15, 2009 at 10:58am
To those (possibly) Jewish posters who heap scorn upon Marty for supporting Obama instead of McCain and Palin, I say good for Marty. No matter how much he loves Israel, and no matter how much I may disagree with his views on the Middle East and Israel, is an American first and foremost. And deciding that, while you may have misgivings about Israel and Obama's policies toward it, the 2008 Republican ticket combined the most abysmal ignorance and cluelessness about the global economic crisis and was otherwise content to spew gaseous vapors about the major challenges facing the United States -- the sudden collapse of major banks and corporations, the thoroughly disfunctional health care system, the myopic energy policy, the sudden vaporization of people's savings and the quagmire of endless overseas military commitments -- was the right thing for a thinking American to do. If you really care so much about the supposed welfare and well-being of Israel that the devastation of America's welfare and well-being is of little account to you (and that Israel's well-being could continue in spite of such devastation), then you really do need to make aliyah as quickly as possible (and give up your useless American citizenship in the process).
- wildboy
June 15, 2009 at 11:15am
Hell, Marty: just say it! The O-man talk's with the thesis-antithesis ease of a man steeped in neo-Marxism. There, now. That's simple. Our president is a Marxist. (And that's why I voted Pubbie for the first time in my life last November.)
- Orson
June 15, 2009 at 11:39am
Excellent article. As a non-Jew I have known this history for over 40 years. What did the Jewish voters miss about Obama's history, writing and affiliations in his life that persuaded them to vote for him? Of course, he's black! And a Democrat!
- John Greene
June 15, 2009 at 11:42am
I still don't understand why Syria and Jordan were carved out of the remains of the old Ottoman Empire but nothing was set aside as "Palestine". As best I can tell neither the Arabs, the European nor the Iranians - either in the 1920s or the 1940s - did anything to advance the Palestinian cause. Am I wrong? If the Arabs and the Iranians - who are Persian and not Arab - are motivated by anything other than visceral hatred of the Jews I cannot discern such motive. They certainly don't appear to be motivated by love and concern for the Palestinians. So why is it that the Arabs and the Iranians hate the Jews more than they love life itself? It seems to me that Israel is in a bit of a tough spot - due of course to the Jewish people having the call and the chutzpah to return to the Middle East and create the state of Israel - and they will not have peace while the Iranians and the Arabs refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist. Again, am I missing something here? Good work on the article by the way. More and better facts always lead to higher quality debate and better decisions.
- James L. Salmon
June 15, 2009 at 12:32pm
Dear RS....Making up history and facts to "please' the other is not a basis for an honest relationship...i doubt you do that in your personal life.....one shouldnt do it elsewhere as well. Your community organizer mentality doesn't work on an international level...or havent your noticed that Obamas been ignored by virtually every country in the world?
- pelsar
June 15, 2009 at 12:47pm
I wonder when anyone will call on the Arab nations to return property taken from jews who used to live there and were kicked out and fled to Israel, leaving their lives and belongings behind, much as many Palestinian refugees did. The difference is that the Arab states kept Palestinian refugees bottled up in camps to use as political fodder, while Israel welcomed their homeless coreligionists and helped them to a part of the nation of Israel. If only Jordan, the last legitimate ruler of the land (not nation, it was NEVER a nation) many call Palestine, would have treated their own countrymen with the same compassion, the last 60 years of mess might never have happened.
- Ben
June 15, 2009 at 12:56pm
Hey Marty, you voted for the guy and with enthusiasm. When we Jews wake up and quit being so politically naive at best, stupid at worst then I will believe it, until then I have little hope but to think we will continue to be our own worst enemies. To my family in Israel... I'm sorry.
- Samuel
June 15, 2009 at 2:00pm
what happens when israel withdraws from territory? it gets attacked and the goal posts are moved. "Israel will get peace when it withdraws from ___!" and marty, you DID support this guy.
- wildboy is wrong
June 15, 2009 at 2:13pm
NEWMAN: Mmm. You present an interesting dilemma. Each of you seemingly has a legitimate claim to the bicycle, and yet the bicycle can have only one rightful owner. Quite the conundrum. As a federal employee, I believe the law is all we have. (getting worked up) It's all that separates us from the savages who don't deserve even the privilege of the daily mail. (angry) Stuffing parcels into mailboxes where they don't belong!!... NEWMAN: Well, you've both presented very convincing arguments. On the one hand, Elaine, your promise was given in haste. But was it not still a promise? Hmm? (Kramer looks at Elaine, thinking his arguments have put him one up.) NEWMAN: And, Kramer, you did provide a service in exchange for compensation. But, does the fee, once paid, not entitle the buyer to some assurance Of reliability? Hmm? Huh? Ahh. These were not easy questions to answer. Not for any man... NEWMAN: ...But I have made a decision. (revelatory) We will cut the bike down the middle, and give half to each of you. ELAINE: (shout) What?! This is your solution?! To ruin the bike?! (Newman's face drops at her negative reaction. Kramer looks across at the bike, looking worried.) ELAINE: Alright, fine. Fine. Go ahead. (standing) Cut the stupid thing in half. KRAMER: No, no, no. Give it to her. I'd rather it belonged to another than see it destroyed. Newman, give it to her, I beg you. ELAINE: Yeah, yeah, y-yeah. NEWMAN: Not so fast, Elaine! Only the bike's true owner would rather give it away than see it come to harm. Kramer, the bike is yours! ELAINE: What?! KRAMER: Sweet justice. Newman, you are wise. Lets just cut the damned thing in half already so we can move on. Newman for President...
- Jason S
June 15, 2009 at 2:14pm
What makes you think 1967 boders would do any good? Were they not in place in 1967 when they were first ganged up on by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan? And lets not forget the other contries who contributed: Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. Feeding the alligator is not a very wise foreign policy, especially for Israel. But it's all relative, right? I mean, on the one hand, you have a people that target innocent civilians because of their religion, and on the other hand you have people building houses on disputed territory. Equally despicable, right?
- Jason S
June 15, 2009 at 2:40pm
I found the article very informative and a good starting point to research the history of the conflict. From the comments, I've decided that anyone using the words "ilk" or "spew" in their comment must be someone with a less than serious mindset or younger than twelve.
- Dee K.
June 15, 2009 at 3:14pm
One problem is that every concession Israel has ever made - since 1947 - has been met with disdain and demands for more. Yasser Arafat, at Camp David, would not even consider a settlement of the dispute.
Nothing will change.
Another point is that the Arabs need their down-trodden "brothers" in order to keep fanning the flames of anti-Semitism. If their Arab "brothers" really wanted a Palestinian homeland, they'd make one in their several million square miles of land. Israel's area: 20,770 sq km. Saudi Arabia: total: 2,149,690 sq km. Egypt: total: 1,001,450 sq km. Libya: total: 1,759,540 sq km.
The only reason they want "Palestine" where it is now is first, to reduce Israel's puny area, and second, to have yet another base from which they can attack.
The land of Israel has always been desolate. Almost nothing grew there. Since 1947, however, in spite of constant attacks from its neighbors, the Israelis have built a modern state. That very fact is a thorn in the side of Islam. Jews have prevailed where Muslims have failed.
- Mike Z
June 15, 2009 at 4:20pm
Where does it say that if you support someone, you aren't allowed to ever disagree with him?
- porkido
June 15, 2009 at 10:13pm
orson: Hegel was a Marxist?
- porkido
June 15, 2009 at 10:24pm
At last the voice of reason. Premordial 'rights' are the basis for premordial enmities. Those that espouse them are doomed to fight old wars. Martin thinks like an Israeli with American citizenship rather than an American of Jewish heritage. And as others have posted, the problems with the Israeli state is one of proto-nationalism: the state reflects the rights of the rightfull'volk'. And we all know where that led last time around. Jews have to escape the zionist grasp. Its ideology is two hundred years out of date.
- Sophistis
June 16, 2009 at 6:01am
The bottom line, unfortunately is that the arabs (Muslims) cannot abide a non-Muslim entity in their midst, no matter how benign or conciliatory. An country controlled by Jews, whom they consider inferior and over whom they have exercised control for centuries, now having control over their own national destiny, is anathema or as the arabs colourfully and inaccurately describe it, a "nakhbah". One can be absolutely certain that had their brethren conquered Palestine in 1948, there would not be and never would have been any question of a Palestine. The inhabitants would have been quite content living as part of Syria trans-Jordan or Egypt. Their own "nationalistic" movement (until the rise of the PLO) always called for a Pan-Arab concept. Even today, were Israel to disappear, so would any concept of Palestine. It might take a year or two until their "independent state" was absorbed into the surrounding countries, carved up the same way as it would have been in 1948. and of course it would likely occur as a result of free and fair elections, just like Iran. You can even get confirmation from Jimmah Carter. Of course, the arabs would never and will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state,or having a Jewish nature or even controlled by Jews. Despite ones reluctance within that great secular democracy of the United States to believe otherwise, this struggle is ultimately a religious one. It is unbelievably hypocritical to deny the Jews any religious attachment to the land of their fathers while in the next breath laud the Muslims' affection and attachment to land they once controlled through religious military conquests. Of course the Israelis can quickly solve the problem by converting to Islam en masse!
- yesjb
June 16, 2009 at 10:45am
Two narratives, one land. George Washington crossing the Deleware was shot through the heart by a sharpshooter aboard a Hamas speedboat. After all, Allah gave the whole world to Muslims. Jews just got part of that tiny strip of land. Let's return Manhattan to the Indians for 24 bucks, or even billions. Who are we to possess it. Palestinian nationalism is a self-proclaimed response to Zionism and the whole concept of a Palestinian people or state is the biggest lie in this whole mess.
- psk
June 16, 2009 at 7:39pm
Souns like Evan Thomas was being ironic. If I were to say, "Hey, look at (any popular hero), he (she) is a god!" Could you really quote me in earnest as though I believed the statement to be literally true? What is literally true is that the greatest tragedy of the Palestinians has been their "leaders" and the way they have been used and massively abused to enrich a minority corrupt thugs (politicians, we call them). The cannot have a country until they renounce violence, and their leaders will never do that because they are paid agents of bigger powers whose agenda has noting to do with establishing a Palestinian state (the 2 state plan).
- psk
June 16, 2009 at 7:50pm
Hey, remember Yassir Ara-billions-Fat? He agreed to disarm the terrorist groups. And look how well he did it! What did the man want? When offered peace and a state, he turned it down, just as the Arabs had done in 1948 and numerous other times. If you live in California, you build earthquake-resistant buildings. If your country is between Lebanon (now apparently independent again), Syria, Jordan and Egypt, backed by Iraq, Saudia Arabia, etc., then you build armed forces. The violence and ethnic hatred in the middle east is thousands of years old, and the Jews in Israel are just a convenient excuse -- for so many things! How useful the Jews continue to be, and not just in physics!
- psk
June 16, 2009 at 7:56pm
Islam has great advantages. If your wife bugs you, you say, "I divorce you" three times and she disappears (into perpetual shame). Plus you can have several wives, and get rid of them all (Shariah experts differ as to how this must be done; a majority think that, what with today's appliances, each wife sits at a computer and receives an email with the divine thrice repeated phrase), then they all vanish (into perpetual shame). On the other hand, if you feel like killing someone (say, a dirty Jew, who is Israeli or American into the bargain, but they could be from anywhere), you kill with the blessing of Allah, blessed be he, and if you happen to get killed, why it's vacation in Florida with gorgeous prepubescent boys and girls to ... serve you.
- psk
June 16, 2009 at 8:08pm
Until the Palestinians achieve a higher stage of consciousness and transcend their attachment to their one-sided, self-pity and partially true story, it will be very difficult to reach common ground. Someone, Obama, Europe, please, help them join the 20st century (21st us too much t ask right now.)
- dorit
June 17, 2009 at 11:20am
Agreed. Obama has not solved any problems, and stirred up new conflicts all over the world. It will be a gigantic task to fix the post Obama world
- r4200
June 17, 2009 at 8:53pm
Wildboy had it right. Peretz lacks the intellectual talent of TNR's past and present editors -- Kinsley, Hertberg, and Chait. More of his tiresome, myopic, Israeli-middle-kingdom view of the world and this reader drops TNR.
- Malcolm F. Baldwin
June 20, 2009 at 10:17pm
By 1920 the Ottoman Empire had exercised undisputed sovereignty over Palestine for 400 years. In Article 95 of the treaty of Sevres, that sovereignty was transferred to England in trust for a national homeland for the jews. The local Arabs had never exercised sovereignty over Palestine and so they lost nothing. Their rights were fully protected by a proviso in the grant: "...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine...". The proviso has been fully observed by the Israelis. Since 1950 the Arabs have built some 261 new settlements in Judea and Samaria --more than twice as many as the Jews, but you never hear of them. They fill them with Arabs from Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan and by the grace of God they become Palestinians. Allahu Akbar! The Arabs call Judea "the West Bank" because they would look silly claiming that Jews are illegally living in Judea.
- WALLACE
June 21, 2009 at 12:57pm
If Obama and his advisors can twist or misuse history on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, what other issues can they twist to suit Obama's agenda? Congratulations to Martin Peretz for setting the record straight. I'm surprised that his editorial minions who worship Obama didn't rise up to topple him.
- Bernard Ury
June 22, 2009 at 8:28pm
President Obama was trying to heal wounds between the USA and the Muslim community in the aftermath of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To appeal to his Muslim audience,to make this overture he had to emphasize the positive and try to find common ground for future cooperation to reconcile existing conflicts. Yet he spoke frankly about the need for the Muslim community to allow for more religious freedom, personal freedom especially for women, the importance of these freedoms in a democracy and the link between women's education and economic prosperity. He spoke of the destructiveness of Al Queda espousing a distorted version of Islam and the need to eliminate nuclear weapons from the region if not the world. I wish he had talked more about the end of oil and the need for Arab economies to diversify and to focus on the development of human capital to assure their future prosperity. I especially wish he had discussed global warming as a force that will affect everyone and will make us all more interdependent and require cooperative efforts to collectively deal with this problem. I will say that I cringed when Obama said Israel will not go away. Though there are those who wish it would the statement suggests that Israel's existence as a sovereign state is somehow different and less certain or less legitimate than other sovereign states - would he say Egypt will not go away? What does go away mean? Where would Israel go? I also wish Obama had spoke of a vision for region that went beyond the Two State Solution. The absence of war, a cold peace yet the constant tension about the possibility of hostilities from Hezbollah, Syria, Gaza and the Palistinian State will not be a solution that will be very comforting to Israel. More must be demanded of the Arab and Egyptian regional states to accept Israel as a regional neighbor. The two state solution must be an regional all state solution.
- LarryK
June 29, 2009 at 6:28pm
Mr. Peretz: please see your 1/31/08 piece titled 'Can Friends of Israel--and Jews--Trust Obama?'.
- Philip Rothman
July 21, 2009 at 11:02pm