FOREIGN POLICY NOVEMBER 15, 2010
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When Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, spoke to some 60 influential Jewish-Americans in the Plaza’s Edwardian Room on September 21, the first question came from World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder, who pushed Abbas on whether he was prepared to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Mr. Lauder was echoing a demand repeatedly made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the last year and a half.
Judging from Mr. Netanyahu’s repeated plucking of this string, one might almost say it is the demand that binds his right-wing governing coalition and declares to the Palestinian Authority—the most nation-building-committed Palestinian entity that has ever existed on any soil whatsoever—and indeed to the rest of the world, what the Jewish state holds dear and definitive. Indeed, earlier the same day, Mr. Netanyahu rolled out the selfsame talking point yet again in a conference call to American Jews:
President Abbas has to decide. He cannot skirt the issue. He cannot find clever language designed to obfuscate or to fudge it. He needs to recognize the Jewish state. He needs to say it clearly and unequivocally. He needs to say it to his own people in their own language. Remember that famous commercial—Just Do It? I think for the Palestinian leadership, it’s even simpler: Just Say It. Say that you recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Say that you recognize the Jewish state.
A variant note was sounded by Stephen J. Savitsky, president of the Orthodox Union, who asked the Palestinian leader to recognize the Jewish character of the Temple Mount (to “create goodwill in the Jewish community,” he said later, as if whatever “goodwill” Muslims ought to extend toward Jews must come at the cost of the simultaneous Muslim idea that the place in question is the Haram-al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary). Mr. Savitsky did not find it too late in the game to demand zero-sum declarations. Like Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Lauder, he offers a touching faith that loyalty oaths will prove binding to people who are ordinarily held to be untrustworthy.
Still later at the Plaza, the plot got more intricate as Daniel Levy of the New America Foundation gave President Abbas the opportunity to say how he would react if Israel took the initiative to declare itself, in full official voice, a state of the Jewish people. Abbas batted the ball back, saying he was ready to recognize whatever state Israel declared itself to be: "If the Israeli people want to name themselves whatever they want, they are free to do so."
Some religious Jews believe that formal Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would prevent a two-state solution from dissolving into a temporary measure that awaits mutation into a one-state successor. Other Israelis are sincerely pressing a reasonable point on demographic, not theological grounds—this, in response to various Palestinian officials making the case for the right of return on precisely the grounds that they do not wish Israel to remain a Jewish state. But how the legitimate concern to preserve a Jewish-majority state would be addressed by a formalistic acknowledgment of the obvious escapes me.
Abbas was on to something: We have here a case of the fetish of naming, a trumping of the purpose that should reside at the center of a moral life by the formality that lives at its margins. Even secular Israelis ought to ask themselves: Does the future of the Jewish people really depend on its longtime adversaries’ verbal certificate to the effect that the state which designates its flag with the Star (or Shield) of David, and whose official language is Hebrew, has a special relationship to the Jews? Isn’t this insistence on the single, exclusive meaning of that plateau in Jerusalem—that extraordinary spot where, long before the First Temple, Abraham is said to have held a knife to the throat of his Isaac—excruciatingly close to a literal-minded, materialist interpretation of the sacred?
Now, I am surely no more familiar with God’s purposes than the Orthodox Union. But possibly I am no less so either. May I wonder aloud whether the guardians of Jewish orthodoxy, again in contrast to those concerned primarily by Israel’s demographic future, sincerely believe that the utterance of syllables by others constitutes a decisive recognition of how the Jewish people stand with the Almighty?
As Liel Leibovitz and I show at length in our new book, The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election, the question of why it was Abraham and his descendants in perpetuity who were divinely elected has roiled and challenged the Jewish people from their beginnings. Within the framework of Genesis, it was by no means self-evident why Abraham had been singled out so ringingly. The story about Abraham having destroyed the idols is a Talmudic add-on, not biblical in origin.
To put it too simply, two traditions intertwine—and collide—in the history of Jewish interpretations of chosenness. One presumes, in effect if not explicitly, that chosen people status is a mark of distinction, a celestial seal of approval—and often enough, a signal for bitter and envious others to pursue their lunatic persecutions. Beginning with God’s command to Abraham to leave his family and resettle in a place he has never seen, this tradition ties Judaism to particular places in the material world. It’s fundamentally a territorial notion, as if physical ownership of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, on the West Bank, were the ne plus ultra of Jewish identity—and as if coastal Tel Aviv, built on what in biblical times was the land of the Philistines, were chopped liver.
The other interpretation, which I would call ethical, takes most seriously that the Jews are charged, even burdened, with a mission of justice—that “there shall be one law for the citizen and the stranger who dwells among you” (Exodus 12:49) and “when an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him” (Leviticus 19:33). Territory has a symbolic presence in this tradition, but the symbols rest on a foundation of human action that marks the other as no less worthy, no less feelingful, no less bloody when pricked, as him- or herself.
In Israel itself, no less a political figure than Tzipi Livni recently told an interviewer from Tablet magazine, “We need to define ourselves through a common vision that helps Israel put some meaning into the words ‘Jewish State.’ … The problem is that a party like Likud, which is not ultra-Orthodox, gives the monopoly on the substance of the words ‘Jewish State’ to the ultra-Orthodox. And this is something that affects not only our relationship with world Jewry but also my life in Israel.”
At this delicate, urgent moment in the history of the Middle East, American Jewish leaders should stop channeling Israel’s myopic prime minister. Netanyahu has appropriated a legitimate and self-evident truth—the Jewish stake in Israel—and transformed it into a cheaply bought obstacle to peace. Since the very meaning of being a Jew rests on an assumption of specialness, he ought to take his own advice seriously. You want to preserve a Jewish state? Make it a Jewish state. Don’t drive the greatness of the Jews into the sea. Give up pettiness for the New Year.
Todd Gitlin’s The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election, written with Liel Leibovitz, has just been published by Simon & Schuster.
56 comments
"as if coastal Tel Aviv, built on what in biblical times was the land of the Philistines, were chopped liver." Wrong. "Pleshet is the Hebrew name for what might otherwise be called the "land of the Philistines" according to the Hebrew Bible (see Book of Genesis 21:32, Exodus 13:17, 1 Samuel 27:1, Joel 3:4).[1] The term refers to the coastal region that stretches roughly from Gaza in the South to Ashdod in the North. The five main cities of the Philistines during the time of the Kings of Israel were Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath." (wiki) If this is the measure of Gitlin's knowledge of Israel's history and geography, why should we pay attention to anything he has to say?
- noga1
November 15, 2010 at 9:24pm
Examples of Abbas's "nation building": "* The PA continues to teach on PA educational TV that Israeli cities across the entire country, including Jaffa and Haifa, are Palestinian cities. * The official PA media deny Israel's right to exist by using terminology that refers to Israel as "Palestinian Interior" and "the homeland occupied in '48." * Maps used by the PA still erase and replace Israel with "Palestine." * The conflict with Israel is defined by PA-appointed political and religious leaders not as territorial but as a religious conflict, sometimes even as Ribat - religious war. * The PA continues to demonize Israelis and Jews: * PA daily: Israel spreads drugs among Palestinian youth. * PA TV and daily: Israel killed Arafat * The PA continues to honor terrorists and glorify violence: * PA TV: "The Martyr who bears arms threatens the enemy." * PA summer camps teach kids "the culture of resistance [violence], the culture of stones and guns" http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=3503 Blood libels: http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=3488
- noga1
November 15, 2010 at 9:32pm
What I am genuinely uncertain (=ignorant) about is why the intention, if there is a serious one, on the Palestinian side to declare a nation-state and seek recognition from other countries is seen (unless I'm wrong on this) as a threat to Israel. If the Palestinian state comes into being, then it is simply fulfilling their part of the 1948 UN-sponsored arrangement for the Mandate territory. The very fact of being a member state commits the State of Palestine to abide by a number of older and newer agreements, but explicit and implicit, including several that would seem to me to enhance Israel's security rather than threaten it. A Palestine that is a member state of the UN (and presumably other venues) would also have a harder job claiming its victimhood, as its ability to function would be a certain test of the coherence of Palestinian nationalism, rather than just a ritual gesture toward nasty Israeli border posts or settlement policies or similar. For Israel, that would demand a different relationship to Palestine too. But is that bad? Particularly as a shift in that relationship might move the weight of the disagreement on the ROR, for example, somewhat toward the field of negotiation rather than absolutist ethnic-religious grievance. Even if the original argument remained in some emotional form, it would be strange for one nation to demand that its citizens have the right to move to another nation.
- ironyroad
November 15, 2010 at 10:04pm
I don't think there is objection to a Palestinian state, per se, But it had better come about as a result of negotiations that determine what its final borders are. If the Palestinians declare themselves a nation-state, recognized by other countries, without these in place, then it will be a recipe for continued infinite war. Palestinians think in terms of the phases plan. As anyone can see from their own statements to themselves, they are not willing to accept that they have no claim for Israel's territory. Gitlin is either naive, ignorant or just disingenuous when he pretends that RoR has nothing to do with recognition of Israel's Jewish nature and deigns to sneer at most Israels who fully grasp the significance of this little detail. I think he is disingenuous more than anything. Because in this article what he is trying to do is shame Israeli Jews into changing their Jewish character. "Does the future of the Jewish people really depend on ... this insistence on the single, exclusive meaning of that plateau in Jerusalem—that extraordinary spot where, long before the First Temple, Abraham is said to have held a knife to the throat of his Isaac—excruciatingly close to a literal-minded, materialist interpretation of the sacred?" What does he mean in this extraordinary spite against the meaning of Zion in Judaism? That the Jewish people should substitute Tel Aviv for Jerusalem (speaking to "materialist")? And why isn't he preaching similar reforms to the Palestinians? Isn't it funny how Obama's revisionist history (as articulated in his Cairo speech and repeated in his Jakarta comments that amount, de-facto, that Jerusalem is a settlement) gets these two Jewish writers to stand behind him, single-file and at tension, like the good little soldiers that they are? Your difficulty understanding it, ironyroad, derives from a well-intentioned impossibility to accept that the Palestinian Arabs are deadly serious when they tell themselves their RoR story. Enough to see what happened to the poor bugger from UNRWA who dares to challenge openly this story: http://hurryupharry.org/2010/11/05/unrwa-shames-andrew-whitley/
- noga1
November 16, 2010 at 7:21am
I remember reading about the Whitley case (you may have posted a similar link earlier). His purported letter of apology certainly looks as if he wrote it while some guy held a knife to his wife's throat. I also found Gitlin's argument a bit disingenuous, and marked by a kind of one-sided ethical blackmail as if political decisions are simply moral puzzles, which they are not. At the same time I continue to scratch my head -- I just don't remember this specific mentioning of a "Jewish" state to be an issue until about two years ago (e.g. I don't recall it being an issue in the Oslo Accords). Once again, Netanyahu is in danger of losing the broader thread as there is something very odd in demanding that another nation express a preferred definition of your nation. As Abbas said (and soundbite-effectively), Israel has the right to name itself what it likes. We'll just have to disagree about the Cairo speech -- I read it again, in its entirety, and I still find it one of the better statements made by an American president overseas. It is an appeal to people to find the better angels of their nature, and offers a new relationship with the U.S. that also involves ending the conspiracy theory BS on the Arab side. I take your point about the dangers of a two-state situation with unresolved territorial issues, but could there be at least a potential upside. If there is to be some symbolic (incl. financial) resolution of the ROR issue -- and what other solution is possible? -- then there would be certain constraints on a State of Palestine in its negotiating posture that aren't there on a movement. I've always had the impression that the Palestinians don't want to take the 1948 offer because of precisely the more stable territorial and political definition that comes with it. But if there's never going to be ROR as the Pals understand it, and ROR as a goal will never be given up . . . ?
- ironyroad
November 16, 2010 at 1:50pm
"But if there's never going to be ROR as the Pals understand it, and ROR as a goal will never be given up . . . ?" Yes... and? Why don't you finish the thought? BTW, I believe that even "symbolic" RoR is a dangerous precedent. "I don't recall it being an issue in the Oslo Accords)." Oslo was a great eye opener for a great many Israelis. Before Oslo and for a few years after (until roundabout the first suicide bombings) there was a pretty robust, mainstream peace camp in Israel.
- noga1
November 16, 2010 at 3:48pm
"Territory has a symbolic presence in this tradition, but the symbols rest on a foundation of human action that marks the other as no less worthy, no less feelingful, no less bloody when pricked, as him- or herself." Gitlin gets carried away by his own rhetoric. He seeks to justify his own preference to a spiritual, "pure" sort of Judaism, that is divorced from territoriality and therefore more "just" and worthy of a Jew like him. According to him, a Jew is a just person, who cares for the other with all the passion in which he cares for himself. In this concept of Judaism he is in great disagreement with Baruch Spinoza, who came to the conclusion that Judaism is not possible without an attachment to the territory (Zion). Therefore, a diaspora Judaism does not really make sense. Jews had forever sort of skirted the issue as long as they were in exile by substituting the longing for Zion for the actual place that is Zion. Without that longing, there would be no Israel, or Jews. It's not for nothing that Spinoza is deemed to be the first Zionist. He understood something that Gitlin, 5 centuries and one near-annihilation later, still does not seem to get. He also seems to suggest that there is a certain incongruity between Jewish attachment to Jerusalem and history and the pursuit of justice. I'm not sure I fully understand what he means by that, or what he means by the Shylock reference.
- noga1
November 16, 2010 at 4:38pm
The reason that the issue of a "Jewish state" came to the fore only a couple years ago is because the Israelis didn't really begin to understand the PA strategy of delegitimization until that recently. For the Israelis, the ability to determine policy within a defensible territory under their control is non-negotiable because it is a matter of life and death. What they fear is that peace will not accompany the surrender of the West Bank to Palestinian control any more than withdrawal from Gaza brought peace on the western front, or withdrawal from Lebanon brought peace on the northern front. If the Palestinians remain committed to terror and denial of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, then the current battle will continue but with Israel at an even greater disadvantage. Hence the repeated refrain in Netanyahu's speeches of recognition of Israel's legitimacy in its present form (i.e., as a Jewish majority state) as a precondition for any good faith negotiations. Abbas ridicules all this as puerile semantic games, but he makes no effort to reassure anyone of his good intentions. Could it be that he doesn't have any? Gitlin seems to miss this point entirely, thus reducing the whole issue of legitimacy to a quibbling over definitions by purblind religious fanatics. His sneering, supercilious judgments mask a dismal failure to understand what's at stake. He seems more concerned to show that his study of the deeper meaning of "chosenness" gives him a unique insight into Israel's blind spots. Given the abysmal lack of insight displayed here, I won't be running out soon to grab a copy of his book.
- willjames77
November 16, 2010 at 5:44pm
The thought. OK: But if there's never going to be ROR as the Pals understand it, and ROR as a goal will never be given up, then it doesn't look as if any substantial/lasting arrangement between Israel and a Palestinian state can ever be reached, and therefore all supposed negotiations are posited upon a damaging failure to recognize a central truth of the situation. Therefore the conflict will continue, Israel will be a nation on a permanent war footing for generations, and the Palestinians will live in a kind of eternal morbid frustration as they refuse everything except what isn't on offer.
- ironyroad
November 16, 2010 at 5:46pm
You would think that Palestinians understand this, no? I don't think they do. They feel they are going to get what they want.
- noga1
November 16, 2010 at 6:08pm
I don't know. I do know that they seem to have internalized the ROR mantra so that they are incapable of saying anything else if asked. But do they truly believe it? Do even smart, educated Palestinians believe they can just wait out Israelis in some game of geopolitical musical chairs? I assume that many do, but some presumably don't, but won't admit it.
- ironyroad
November 16, 2010 at 7:02pm
Irony, the Palestinians are not simply waiting quietly and patiently for things to change in their favor. They are working diligently to weaken and isolate Israel on various fronts and in a myriad of different venues. They have organized a very successful "hate Israel" campaign on college campuses; they have arranged to have Israel severely condemned for human rights abuses by U.N. commissions; they are making headway with the BDS movement through which they hope to cripple Israel economically; they terrorize the population of southern Israel by periodically and unpredictably firing missiles into their civilian centers. Most tellingly, they deny that the Jews have any historic connection to the land of Israel. They teach their children that Jews are evil invaders, that they stole their land, and that those who murder Jews on buses, in restaurants, and in shopping malls are the role models most worthy of emulation. They organize soccer leagues for their kids where each team is named after a suicide bomber, and they sponsor dance performances to celebrate their most successful murderess. They are preparing their children for eternal warfare, not for peaceful compromise. Note that these are the "moderates". The others are openly committed to genocide. The Palestinians are building a giant boa constrictor which they believe, with a little help from their friends, will eventually squeeze the life out of Israel. They believe that time is on their side. Those of us who believe we understand the game and sympathize with the plight of Israel are trying in various ways to break this strangle-hold.
- willjames77
November 17, 2010 at 1:22am
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3664 "Danny Rubinstein’s account, in his Summer 2010 Dissent article (“One State/Two States: Rethinking Israel and Palestine”), of the disdainful reaction of Sufyan Abu-Zayda, a prominent figure in the Palestinian Authority, to Benjamin Netanyahu’s “Bar-Ilan speech,” in which the right-wing prime minister of Israel formally accepted the two-state solution, is remarkable and telling. Someone who perceives this conflict as it is usually perceived—a small people struggling for national independence after decades of military occupation by a mighty regional power—would perhaps have expected something different. Admittedly, it is natural enough to avoid giving the rival side credit for any show of moderation. A moderate Palestinian spokesman might have questioned Netanyahu’s sincerity, called on the international community to hold the prime minister to his word, and insisted that the future Palestinian state be established on Palestinian terms rather than those suggested by Netanyahu. Instead, Abu-Zayda dismisses the very idea of separate Palestinian statehood: Netanyahu is not doing us any favors by agreeing to two states; we have another, more attractive option—“one state.”
- noga1
November 17, 2010 at 6:36am
From the article above: "On the issue of the right of return, the Palestinian negotiator’s understanding of international law and justice in fact precludes any compromise on substance: The Palestinian decision makers do not have the right to decide the fate of the refugees; only the refugee himself can decide his own fate. It is not up to the international [community] either. It is the refugee who has the right to choose whether to return to Israel, return to Palestine, or remain where he is—and in all of these cases [he is entitled to] compensation. It is not the Right of Return or compensation; it’s the Right of Return and compensation (Middle East Media Research Institute translation)." Perhaps it is time for people to adopt this principle as a universal one and start agitating among all the refugees who were driven one way or another from their homes in the last 70 years to insist on a right of return plus compensation. I mean, all the refugees in the world, not just in the Middle East.
- noga1
November 17, 2010 at 6:54am
"The Palestinians are building a giant boa constrictor which they believe, with a little help from their friends, will eventually squeeze the life out of Israel" Example on how it is done: http://www.israelwhat.com/2010/11/15/a-book-to-change-your-way-of-thinking/
- noga1
November 17, 2010 at 8:50am
Just one functional point, which, I think, is Gitlin's point, unadorned. What's wrong with this answer: "If the Israeli people want to name themselves whatever they want, they are free to do so." If in fact, Israel could negotiate constructively with the Palestinians--I think they can't due to Palestinian irredentism, in fact, among other things--and get a deal her leaders thought they could live with, what is served by demanding symbolic utterances? Proof will be in eating the pudding of functional arrangements, which mean, among other things, no right of return, secure borders and, generally, Israel's confidence in her own security. So if the insistence on Jewish state recognition is a functional obstacle to the peace talks--I don't know enough of their inner dynamics to know if it is--but if it is, I think that Gitlin is right and that demand should be foregone for many of the the reasons he sets out. I'd like to see the argument contra.
- basman
November 17, 2010 at 12:31pm
Clarification: What's wrong with this answer: ...Abbas batted the ball back, saying he was ready to recognize whatever state Israel declared itself to be: "If the Israeli people want to name themselves whatever they want, they are free to do so."...?
- basman
November 17, 2010 at 1:52pm
It's rhetorically quite an effective comeback, as it points up exactly the problem I mentioned above: why would one nation want its central identifying characteristic to be formally expressed by another nation? Curiously enough, the answer also presupposes that "Israeli people" is a valid existing identity in and of itself. Abba was (whether intentionally or not) speaking in the voice of a leader of a country making a point about a neighboring country. I wonder if he meant to put it this way.
- ironyroad
November 17, 2010 at 2:34pm
Nice point.
- basman
November 17, 2010 at 2:52pm
"...why would one nation want its central identifying characteristic to be formally expressed by another nation?" It's not a symbolic utterance that Israel is after. If the agreement is called a "peace agreement" then it should be an agreement that puts an end to all claims and grievances from both sides. RoR is the flaming sword that Palestinians are holding over Israel's Jewish identity. If RoR, then no Jewish state is possible (any doubts about that?) . Conversely, a formal recognition of Israel's Jewish essence could be actually a way for Palestinians to keep their RoR, confined to its proper place: an absolete right, a right that cannot be implemented even if it is kept as some sort of an article within Palestinian identity. What they cannot have it both: keeping RoR alive and refusing to accept Israel's Jewishness. Abbas is in no position to either repeal RoR or recognize Israel's legitimacy. Therefore his answer which impressed ironyroad so was not that of a leader making a point about a neigbouring country with which he is maturely ready to sign a deal, but rather, it was a perfunctory and glib answer with no substance to it. At least his own people understand him very well.
- noga1
November 17, 2010 at 4:56pm
Basman, here's a way of paraphrasing the dialog that might help focus the underlying dynamic: Netanyahu: "We need clear assurances that you are willing to respect our right to live here in peace, and that you will cease trying to destroy us." Abbas: "I'm not in the assurances business. If you need reassurance, go ask your mother."
- willjames77
November 17, 2010 at 5:11pm
There are many questions that one might ask about what it means to be Jewish and/or Israeli and the relationship between the two. It's worth remembering, nevertheless, that Hitler had a very inclusive definition of Jews and was not especially troubled by the subtle variations in the extent of their identification with the Zionist enterprise or with differences in their observance of the holidays.
- willjames77
November 17, 2010 at 5:43pm
That may well be all true, Noga and willjames, but I have to say that the reason why the phrase struck me was that I don't recall ever hearing or reading a Palestinian leader use the phrase "the Israeli people" before. Indeed, thinking about it further: if he had said "the Jewish people can name themselves what they want," the suggestion would be that they are just an ethnic group, e.g. they have no particular right to national territory or sovereignty, but they might be permitted to live in a one-state Palestine if they behave themselves, and in that context who cares what they call themselves, and yadda yadda yadda. But to say "Israeli people" is, whether a conscious formulation or not, to note the statehood/citizenship of those people.
- ironyroad
November 17, 2010 at 7:51pm
He was speaking to Jewish-American leaders. What did you expect him to say, "The Zionist entity"?
- noga1
November 17, 2010 at 8:09pm
willjames77: Hello. Your characterization of the "underlying dynamic," for which I thank you, and if I'm understanding it, doesn't make a lot of sense to me, respectfully. I'd argue, to repeat, it's the terms of the deal that matters, not symbolic words uttered. If Israel gets the terms on security it wants--which, as I noted, I don't think will happen, which makes the discussion a tad surreal--what need has she of words, which she can't rely on in any event. No? I'd still like to see the argument contra Gitlin's point.
- basman
November 17, 2010 at 11:05pm
willjames77: Hello. Your characterization of the "underlying dynamic," for which I thank you, and if I'm understanding it, doesn't make a lot of sense to me, respectfully. I'd argue, to repeat, it's the terms of the deal that matters, not symbolic words uttered. If Israel gets the terms on security it wants--which, as I noted, I don't think will happen, which makes the discussion a tad surreal--what need has she of words, which she can't rely on in any event. No? I'd still like to see the argument contra Gitlin's point.
- basman
November 17, 2010 at 11:05pm
Noga: "He was speaking to Jewish-American leaders. What did you expect him to say, 'The Zionist entity'?" I didn't know that. Now I'm somewhat confused. If Palestinians are engaged in a to-the-death conflict with Israelis about something that goes farther than a mere territorial dispute (as you and others have recently made clear on these boards), what is Abbas doing speaking to Jewish-American leaders and why would Jewish-American leaders invite the leader of an annihilationist conspiracy to speak to them?
- ironyroad
November 18, 2010 at 2:25am
Why didn't you know that? it's mentioned in the introductory paragraph to Gitlin's article here. I remember Mike Wallace, many years ago, on TV, where he was talking about going to Tunisia to interview Yasser Arafat. He asked him one too many questions and Arafat's assistants urged him and his camera crew to hurry up and leave. Wallace bragged that it was the Jews, Jewish journalists who actually helped thrust Arafat and the Palestinian cause into the world's attention. Abbas is acting on the premise that American Jews carry a lot of clout with the media and the administration. And he knows how eager they are to bring this conflict to an end, on American terms, how eager they are to believe him. Just look at some of the Jewish posters around here and note how all critical faculties and historical knowledge desert them when they decide arbitrarily that they will believe the Palestinians over Israeli leaders. I'm kind of surprised that you would even ask this question. Easy for an Arab leader to speak to American Jews. It would be a very different matter if he were to speak to Israelis, at the Knesset, let's say. "Wallace: You say you want peace, correct, Mr. President? Arafat: Yes Wallace: But you incite Palestinians, especially young Palestinians, to violence. Just this past week, you said publicly, "Millions of holy warriors are on their way to Jerusalem. Jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, holy war, holy war, holy war." What does that mean? Arafat: I am repeating some of holy Muslim words, not mine. Wallace: On your state-controlled television, a cleric – here's what he said. "Whoever can fight them with his weapons should go out to battle. Nothing will deter the Jews, except the color of their filthy people's blood. Nothing will deter them, except for us voluntarily detonating ourselves in their midst." I found it difficult to believe. Arafat: I didn't, I didn't hear it. He told Wallace he hadn't heard it himself. Israel claimed that Arafat refused to stop the suicide bombers. Arafat said he tried to, but that no one could stop those zealots. And he didn't want to go near Wallace's next question. " http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/12/60minutes/main655482.shtml?tag=untagged I ask you, has anything at all changed in the rhetoric and practices, with Abbas as the leader of the Palestinians? Except that Abbas is a much more personable person and therefore what he says comes across to you at least as a reliable enough statement to which Israel should reciprocate in kind? But it's not really your life line, is it? Do you think that the fact that you have nothing to lose or gain from an I/P deal makes you a better judge of what Abbas's intentions are?
- noga1
November 18, 2010 at 7:54am
Noga, it's depressing to see for how many years Palestinian double-talk has flourished. They seem to have a profound grasp of how desperately Americans and Western Europeans want to see reconciliation in the Holy Land. So, the occasional lip service to peace immediately displaces a decades-long track record of duplicity, treachery and terror in the public mind. (How well they understand that the public mind has a duration of sixty minutes and an attention span of twenty seconds.)
- willjames77
November 18, 2010 at 8:23am
Greetings, Basman! If words don't really matter, why do the terms of the deal matter? Treaties are also just words, albeit on paper. In earlier agreements, the Palestinians agreed to cease incitement, to forego violence, and to resolve outstanding issues through peaceful negotiations. That was before they launched the Intifada in 2002 which claimed the lives of over 1000 Israeli civilians. The Israelis are insisting that they want to hear Abbas say to them, and to his own constituency in Arabic, that he recognizes the legitimate right of Israel, as the Jewish state alongside of Palestine, to exist peacefully and securely. Since he would choke on these words if he tried to spit them out, he prefers to waffle and evade. For Israelis, regardless of phrasing, there is only one relevant question: Are you willing to accept our presence here and make peace, or are you negotiating just to improve your chances of defeating us in the next battle? Meanwhile, Basman, don't forget to take a break from the heavy workload from time to time!
- willjames77
November 18, 2010 at 8:40am
Noga, you're right. Somehow I managed to read the piece without grasping the first paragraph. I thought it was a discussion of several different statements Abbas had made over time. But as you say: "Abbas is acting on the premise that American Jews carry a lot of clout with the media and the administration. And he knows how eager they are to bring this conflict to an end, on American terms, how eager they are to believe him." Although not a Jew, I probably fit the second sentence in that description quite well. However, I don't set myself up as a judge, and I was just wondering out aloud if the word choice meant anything, and it probably doesn't. Just my eternal search for a pragmatic Palestinian nationalism that will never come into being.
- ironyroad
November 18, 2010 at 10:35am
willjames7 Words do matter, and I understand what you are saying. And you have an argument, granted. But can I try to turn that point back on you? If the Paestinians despite their words are simply planning their next move with one more treaty evincing one more step towards dire ends, then what matters it then what Abbas says publicly or in Arabic about recognition. Israel, will only make a deal that she perceives is functionally geared to enure to her security. If she has that deal, if the Palestinians are willing to make it, which as I say, I doubt, then it strikes me that public recogntion is functionally beside the point, and if it is any kind of condition of negotiations which are the only way to get to a functional deal, then I think insisting on it is counter productive. Another point, if there is a deal--without the recognition--and it gets implemented and works, there is a better and more solid chance the recognition will come along in time from the bottom up/facts on the ground, rather than artificially from the top down. No? As for my work: "I try to get out, but they pull me back in."
- basman
November 18, 2010 at 12:28pm
Yes, what you say is certainly true in turning the argument back at me. Let's put it this way: if a man's wife says "Look at me and tell me you love me", he could do so and still be unfaithful afterwards. But if he's unwilling even to speak the words in the first place, that says something else, doesn't it?
- willjames77
November 18, 2010 at 3:09pm
...that says something else, doesn't it?... It certainly does! Gotta' run: there's something I need to tell my wife. :-)
- basman
November 18, 2010 at 4:05pm
ironyroad, I have a layman's Lit. Professoryish ? for you, which will be simple to answer, but I prefer to ask you not here. To that end and only if you don't mind, would you send me your office email address? I'll of course keep it to myself. If you prefer not to, that's fine too, it goes without saying. You can send it to itzikbasman@sympatico.ca.
- basman
November 18, 2010 at 4:11pm
more than the usual pleasure reading willjames and noga. Gitlin uses TNR to bash Netanyahu yet again. Gitlin's anti-Israel, anti-American exceptionalism book? Amazon sales rank down to 248,134, nine weeks after publication. The Strand in NYC is selling new copies at 50% off. Remainder pile by Christmas? basman again stubbornly refuses to budge from his opinion, regardless of how many times he gets a rational response to his insistence asks for the contra argument . boring tactic.
- K2K
November 18, 2010 at 8:50pm
my apology - it appears the anesthetic from Tuesday afternoon has not yet worn off. I do wish Americans so anxious for 'peace' would focus their attention on an actual war and let Israel have a frozen conflict. Korea gets a frozen conflict, but not the Jews...
- K2K
November 18, 2010 at 8:56pm
Honeychile: my interpretation of reality is that when I got an argument, I acknowledged it and tried to engage it. But then again maybe I didn't and men and women will debate the issue eternally. But then again maybe they won't.
- basman
November 18, 2010 at 9:29pm
Gitlin says: "A variant note was sounded by Stephen J. Savitsky, president of the Orthodox Union, who asked the Palestinian leader to recognize the Jewish character of the Temple Mount (to “create goodwill in the Jewish community,” he said later, as if whatever “goodwill” Muslims ought to extend toward Jews must come at the cost of the simultaneous Muslim idea that the place in question is the Haram-al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary)." _________ Here is what Savitsky said: "President Abbas missed an opportunity this evening to make a key statement that would have created goodwill in the Jewish community," Savitsky said. "The fact and importance of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount to the Jewish People is paramount in Israel and the Jewish community at large, and our historic ties must be acknowledged - irrespective of whatever final arrangement President Abbas seeks to secure in negotiations." Gitlin's interpretation "as if whatever “goodwill” Muslims ought to extend toward Jews must come at the cost of the simultaneous Muslim idea that the place in question is the Haram-al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary)." is simply not there, cannot be found anywhere in the quoted words. Moreover, since Savitzky went to the trouble of qualifying his insistence that "our historic ties must be acknowledged" by adding, emphatically, "irrespective of whatever final arrangement President Abbas seeks to secure in negotiations.", Gitlin's representation of Savitzky's comments is a lie.
- noga1
November 19, 2010 at 2:14pm
"Honeychile" http://www.norfield-publishing.com/Noseart/GHIGroup/HoneyChile.jpg Is this some variation of "sugar tits"?
- noga1
November 19, 2010 at 3:37pm
Gitlin says: "The other interpretation, which I would call ethical, takes most seriously that the Jews are charged, even burdened, with a mission of justice—that “there shall be one law for the citizen and the stranger who dwells among you” (Exodus 12:49) and “when an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him” (Leviticus 19:33). Territory has a symbolic presence in this tradition, but the symbols rest on a foundation of human action that marks the other as no less worthy, no less feelingful, no less bloody when pricked, as him- or herself." What does it mean, when he is discussing the future of Israel as a Jewish state, that he speaks of "Territory" as "a symbolic presence"? What did he means by the title he gave his piece "Many Ways to be a Jewish State"?? What does it mean, that his words express admiration for Abbas, for dodging the crucial issue, while sneering at the Orthodox Jews who pose straightforward questions to a self-declared peace partner who refuses to deal with those questions?? What does it mean that he quotes from Exodus the law that pertains to the stranger who has migrated into the territory of the Israelites (today they would be known as ethnic minorities) when he is talking about Palestinians who say they want their own statehood, clear of any Jewish minorities? What does it mean that he uses Shylock's words to stab Jewish defenders of Israel's right to be and to be accepted as a Jewish state?
- noga1
November 19, 2010 at 4:06pm
what does it mean? I assume Gitlin wants a one-state secular multi-cultural paradise because joining the concepts of Jewishness and nationalism is anathema to a post-modern transnationalist like Gitlin, who barely conceals his revulsion and contempt for the Likud-Shas-Beitenu coalition, full of the observant Jews and/or nationalists lording over the token remnants of Labor. Yes, it is delusional to believe the leadership of the Palestinians want to share the land, just as it is delusional to believe Islam is not an Imperialist intolerant ideology. Even more delusional is Gitlin thinking he can find acolytes for his narrative inside TNR.com Gitlin and Beinart need to start their own blog and see how many followers they can attract. When I read Beinart at Daily Beast, it is only to enjoy the comments attacking HIS delusions. I wonder how he will fare under Tina Brown...
- K2K
November 19, 2010 at 5:52pm
...Likud-Shas-Beitenu coalition,.. That's some coalition sugar tits!
- basman
November 19, 2010 at 11:21pm
"Sugar tits": Any sufficiently attractive female law officer dispatched to oppress good Christian men by her masters within the international conspiracy of invisible Zionist superjews. "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?" inquired the heavily inebriated Mel Gibson, the Academy Award-winning director. In other words, a term favoured by sex-hungry, drunkard megalomaniacs suffering from some type of rationality-resistant pathology.
- noga1
November 20, 2010 at 8:44am
Gitlin: "Judging from Mr. Netanyahu’s repeated plucking of this string, one might almost say it is the demand that binds his right-wing governing coalition and declares to the Palestinian Authority—the most nation-building-committed Palestinian entity that has ever existed on any soil whatsoever—and indeed to the rest of the world, what the Jewish state holds dear and definitive. " The real Churchill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1v2mabkafM&feature=player_embedded#! (
- noga1
November 20, 2010 at 8:51am
Here are two quotes from Isaiah Berlin's 1979 article: "Einstein and Israel". For some reason it seems pertinent as an answer to Gitlin's piece which, the more I read it the more it disgusts me. Particularly the explicit venom that flows from his pen towards Orthodox Jews. http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/berlin-isaiah_einstein-and-israel.html "Man can flourish" he declared, "only when he loses himself in a community. Hence the moral danger of the Jew who has lost touch with his own people and is regarded as a foreigner by the people of his adoption." "The tragedy of the Jews is ... that they lack the support of a community to keep them together. The result is a want of solid foundations in the individual which in its extreme form amounts to moral instability." "I do not wish to imply that Einstein necessarily condemned assimilation to the culture of the majority as always ignoble or doomed to failure. It was plainly possible for children of Jewish parents to find themselves so remote from their community and its traditions that even if they considered it, they were unable psychologically to reestablish genuine links with it. He was clear that in a civilized society every man must be free to pursue his own path in the manner that seemed to him best, provided that this did not do positive harm to others. He did not accuse these scientists and writers and artists of dishonorable or craven motives; their human dignity was not, for him, in question, only their degree of self-understanding. It was his incapacity for self-deception or evasion, his readiness to face the truth, and - if the facts demanded it - to go against the current of received ideas, that marked Einstein's bold rejection of the central elements in the Newtonian system, and it was this independence that characterized his behavior in other spheres. He rejected conventional wisdom: "Common sense," he once said, "is the deposit of prejudice laid down in the mind before the age of eighteen." If something did not seem to him to fit, morally or politically, no less than mathematically, he would not ignore, escape, forget it; adjust, arrange, add a patch or two in the hope that it would last his time; he would not wait for the Messiah - the world revolution - the universal reign of reason and justice-to dissolve the difficulty."
- noga1
November 20, 2010 at 9:47am
I had a similar reaction to Gitlin's article. It was as if it begin to putrefy as the days passed. At first it seemed to me that he was just obtuse. With the passage of time, I changed my vote from "obtuse" to "despicable." It's really just another iteration of the big lie: the fanatical religious settlers are the problem; they refuse to compromise with the pragmatic Mr. Abbas. Somehow this version of events sells especially well to the factually-ignorant progressive left. It fits in so nicely with their disdain for religion and their loathing for right-wing extremists. The "settler" has been cast in the role of right-wing religious nut who is driven by luny messianic fantasies to deny Palestinians their basic rights. Netanyahu, they argue, has to cater to these nutcases to hold his coalition together. Why else would an Israeli government support the continued construction of homes for Jews in Jerusalem--when it's the only obstacle to peace throughout the Middle East? (Isn't it remarkable that those who believe this are considered sane?) The "settlers" in Gush Etzion, by the way, when they are not waiting for the Messiah with bated breath, have developed a state-of-the-art treatment center for children throughout Israel afflicted with Downs Syndrome. They have created an educational program which is having remarkable success in integrating Downs children into regular school programs by the fourth grade--rather than segregating them in special schools. It continues to astonish me that these folks are regularly vilified by people, like Gitlin, who think they are ever-so-much more enlightened because they read Marcuse forty years ago.
- willjames77
November 21, 2010 at 4:55pm
Now if I could only find someone to introduce me to Latma's Ronit...
- willjames77
November 21, 2010 at 5:27pm
"It was as if it begin to putrefy as the days passed." That's because (I think) he conceals his meanings in coded phrases that it takes time to de-code and realize what it is really that he is saying. "Within the framework of Genesis, it was by no means self-evident why Abraham had been singled out so ringingly. The story about Abraham having destroyed the idols is a Talmudic add-on, not biblical in origin. " Abraham is singled out because he introduced a new understanding of God, the understanding that presumes a higher order of morality and goodness in the human race. It occurs to me that Abraham's epiphany can in some aspects be likened to Socrates's mission in Athens. Plato's Socrates constructed a new meaning for the gods (this was one of the indictments that led to his execution, that he created "new" gods). For him, the gods are always right and set a standard of moral perfection that humans must strive to emulate. The Socratic gods were much like Abraham's God, a model of decency and justice (and not the capricious and irrational gods of the pagan world). And as Socrates remains a philosopher central to Western civilization, so does Abraham remain central to Judaism. He embodies the ideals that Jews admire most. He is the one who provided the paradigm shift, from an arbitrary distribution of power sanctioned by eccentric magical gods to a more humanistic way of living and thinking. Gitlin's interpretation of the sacrifice of Isaac is an Islamic interpretation, not a Jewish one. Jews actually have been trying to understand this story in ways that would be judged blasphemous by Muslims. One important interpretation claims that the story marks the end of human sacrifice. Abraham's God, whom Gitlin mocks, wanted to clarify to his human disciple that human sacrifices were no longer acceptable, desirable or needed. I would urge Gitlin to read Alan Dershowitz's book "The Genesis of justice". He might find it instructive in understanding what is really happening in Genesis and why Abraham was singled out by the Jews for honouring. In many ways he was actually the archetypal Jew: a dissenter, a contrarian, a seeker of justice. And btw, I still don't get what is Shylock's speech doing in Gitlin's article. Does he intend to compare Mr. Savitsky and other Orthodox Jews to Antonio, at whom Shylock intended his speech, who said: " I am as like to call thee so again, To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too."
- noga1
November 22, 2010 at 10:59am
I heard an interesting Midrash on the Binding of Isaac delivered by a Reformed Rabbi a couple years ago on Yom Kippur. He asked why we believed that Abraham had passed his test of faith. Perhaps he had failed it. Perhaps he had learned in the moment when the angel stopped him that to obey the command to murder the innocent in the name of God is not at all what God wants. Brunelleschi's depiction of Abraham's face suggests that he was utterly baffled by the unexpected outcome. Here a brief essay that explores the Renaissance treatment of the Abraham/Isaac story: http://www.culturedtraveler.net/Archives/MAR2006/Florence_Panel.htm ............... Meanwhile I think that Gitlin meant to invert the bit from Shylock's speech so that it evokes sympathy for Palestinians instead of for the Jews. In other words, "If you prick Palestinians, they bleed too. Jews have no monopoly on suffering, and they need to recognize Palestinian humanity as well as their own." It's essentially a variation of the trope that Jews are today's Nazis. "After all that the Jews went through, you would think that they would have more compassion for blah,blah, blah..." Needless to say, these words are typically mouthed by those who have no sympathy or compassion for the Jews whatsoever.
- willjames77
November 22, 2010 at 5:39pm
"Perhaps he had failed it. Perhaps he had learned in the moment when the angel stopped him that to obey the command to murder the innocent in the name of God is not at all what God wants" Yes, I once thought about this possibility, that it was actually a failure of faith in God when Avraham agreed to go as far as he did. Especially it is a baffling obedience when you remember how stubbornly he had argued with God about the destruction of Sodom. Could it be that he, already then, suffered from the Jew flu, feeling more empathy for the suffering of others than to one's own kin? http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/news/the-jew-flu-the-strange-illness-of-jewish-anti-semitism-1.267172
- noga1
November 22, 2010 at 8:44pm
Although I realize you're proposing the Jew flu explanation half in jest, it's worth recognizing that it can't give us any insight into Abraham's actions. Any more than the banning of pork under Kosher laws can be explained by reference to a prescient understanding of bacterial contamination. We are still centuries away from diaspora communities under siege and from the discovery of germs. I'd love to continue the Abraham conversation, but first I wanted to thank you for the Jew Flu link. It led me to an article by Kenneth Levin published in the JCPA journal a few years ago which is head-and-shoulders above anything I've ever read on this topic: http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-046-levin.htm I've sensed this psychological gestalt in those that I sometimes describe as "inverted Jews". But it made my day to find such a clear, powerful analysis fully fleshed-out and even extended to interpret the pathologies of the Jewish state in its response toward its aggressors. I've just ordered Levin's book "The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Seige". Here are a couple of excerpts from his article: 'Max Nordau, the Austrian Jewish writer and early Zionist, observed in 1896, "It is the greatest triumph of anti-Semitism that it has brought the Jews to view themselves with anti-Semitic eyes." But Nordau could have added that if Jews saw themselves as the haters saw them, they often viewed other Jews as fitting those stereotypes even more. Thus, German Jews not infrequently viewed Polish Jews as the true and deserving butt of Jew-hatred; secularized Jews regarded religious Jews similarly; and unionized working-class Jews held comparable opinions of the Jewish bourgeoisie. Moreover, those who looked at others across the various social divides in this way... did not acknowledge that their biases reflected a pleading for gentile approval. Instead, they cast their prejudices as representing a more progressive and enlightened path.' Casts a certain light on the dynamics of various discussions on these boards, wouldn't you say?
- willjames77
November 23, 2010 at 7:39am
I was of course joking, and not halfly so, in my suggestion. The historical Jew as Jew did not come into being until much later.
- noga1
November 23, 2010 at 4:00pm
Point taken. I only wanted to emphasize that, while certain elements of Jewish character such as disputatiousness, for example, can be seen in the earliest stories about Jews, there are others, like self-rejection, that are tied to the historical experience of being marginalized and threatened throughout the centuries. Let me know if you find Levin's insights as stimulating as I did. Re: evil, did my questions reach you?
- willjames77
November 23, 2010 at 4:16pm
Yes, it did and you will get an answer. I'm preparing an Israeli-Sephardic table for a party on Saturday and I'm busy thinking about recipes and such.
- noga1
November 23, 2010 at 5:01pm
בתאבון
- willjames77
November 23, 2010 at 5:43pm