Friday, December 28, 2007
The Campaign in Israel Against Human Rights Organizations
It has been fascinating to witness over the last few years Israel's loss of moral stature by going after international human rights groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors without Borders.
Why isn't it enough that Israel merely violates human rights? Why does it have to oppose the human rights agenda? The answer is simple enough. Because Israel views itself, without much justification, as a moral and civilized country, it has to confront the overwhelming amount of counter-evidence gathered by the human rights groups, be they Israeli, Palestinian, or international. So it uses the same techniques that any of use when arrested for criminal activity: claiming unfair application of the law, crying double-standard, etc., etc.
When Alan Dershowitz wrote the Case for Israel, a self-serving book that praised Israel's record on human rights, he could not cite a single mainstream human rights organization that agreed with him. Norm Finkelstein's book, Beyond Chutzpah, cited case after case of human rights violations according to Israeli and non-Israeli human rights organizations -- all of which were dismissed as biased by Dershowitz, in the best tradition of defense attorneys who try to divert a jury by crying foul.
It's not enough that Israelis commit crimes; but whine about being punished unfairly.
Of course, this technique doesn't really work effectively with the human rights organizations whose agenda is, uh, human rights. Because they go after everybody who violates human rights -- Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, Chinese, African, etc. Just look at the websites of HRW and Amnesty International. The vast majority of their activities don't concern Israel. They are much more critical of Israel's enemies in the Arab world then they are of Israel.
If you want to spend an entertaining hour, you can either stare at the ceiling, or visit Gerald Steinberg's NGO Monitor. Steinberg is a right-wing poli sci professor at Bar Ilan, whose academic specialty is arms control. But he appears a lot in the media as a defender of Israel.
During the second intifada and the second Lebanese war, when Israel was universally condemned -- I mean UNIVERSALLY condemned for human rights violations -- his website went after Ken Roth's Human Rights Watch.
Now, if NGO Monitor were serious in showing NGO bias, it would not just look at the human rights organizations' reports on Israel. It would examine all of the human rights organizations reports, in all parts of the world, for signs of bias.
Now, if NGO Monitor were serious in showing NGO bias, it would not just look at the human rights organizations' reports on Israel. It would examine all of the human rights organizations reports, in all parts of the world, for signs of bias.
For example, it is argued by right-wingers that most human rights organizations are anti-statist, post-national, yada, yada, yada. And there may be truth to some of these claims, just as there may be truth to the claim that putting human rights at the forefront is inevitably going to clash with the rights of states, or at least, their interests. I suppose that one could be a right-wing libertarian and agree, but there are few of those out there; it is mostly the left that backs the human rights groups (although traditionally, doctrinaire left-wing organizations have not exactly been champions of human rights.) Of course, states that violate human rights always chafe at any criticism. Some may claim that in the long term, human rights are best protected by a system of responsible states, that the value of protecting human rights must be balanced against other values connected with states and their responsibilities to their citizens, etc.
Steinberg could also get more credit if he were willing to agree with some of the serious criticisms of the groups. After all, even according to its supporters, Israel violates the human rights of Palestinians, but only in order to protect the human rights of their own citizens.
But let's face it -- if you are on record as criticizing as biased Amnesty International,Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, the Ford Foundation, Be-Tzelem, etc., nobody, except the loonies on the far right, is going to take you seriously. Of course, you could be right and all the groups could be wrong. But unless you are the sort of Jew who believes that the world is against you, and that these organizations are populated by antisemites and self-hating Jews -- AND that organizations that spend most of their energy slamming even more serious human rights violators than Israel are doing so either because they are bored, or in order to cover up their antisemitism...well, if you believe that, please don't leave a comment on this blog, but get treatment for acute paranoia.
I am willing to allow that all these groups make mistakes, but if that's the case, I don't see why they are more likely to make more mistakes in their reports on Israel than in their reports on Saudia Arabia or Hamas or Pakistan or China.
I wouldn't have even brought the NGO monitor up if I hadn't wanted to use it as an example of how Israel, which once thought it had the moral high ground, has lost it in the eyes of the world. When you are going after the human rights organizations, you are going after human rights. Pure and simple.
What happened? Well, World War II happened. The Holocaust Happened. Hiroshima happened. Dresden happened. The Twentieth Century happened. A whole system of International Humanitarian Law came into place to deal with crimes against humanity. That's right -- in a sense, both the State of Israel and International Humanitarian Law are legacies of the madness that happened in the middle of the twentieth century. And that has taken the Jewish state by surprise. Because it turns out that not everything you do to protect your own people is legal, much less moral. Humans have rights that are inalienable, or at least so it is claimed. And according to the the human rights organizations, those rights take precedent over your manifest, national destiny.
I want to make it clear that this approach is not self-evidently correct. Human rights may not be worth defending at all costs.
But you can't credibly go after the human rights organizations when your motives are so transparently self-serving. You will be about as convincing as the criminal who complains that the police are always picking on him and on nobody else. The argument will sound reasonable to the criminal and to the criminal's family -- but to nobody else.
The Israeli army stepped up a broad offensive in the Gaza Strip on Last Thursday, killing at least nine Palestinians with airstrikes and shelling attacks Palestinians accused Israel of poisoning the atmosphere ahead of President Bush's visit to the region .
In strikes all over Gaza, Israeli aircraft and tanks hit buildings the Israelis "said were used by militants". In one clash, Israel shelled a house in the southern city of Khan Younis, killing a "militant" along with his mother, sister and brother. Israeli army spokeswoman Capt. Noa Meir said militants were "intentionally using civilian areas" to fire at troops and blamed them for the deaths.
After the shelling, the three-story house leaned to one side, barely standing, as an Israeli bulldozer leveled land nearby. the farm land is also a "militant"
Labels: Israel Democracy
The propaganda machineThe goal of hasbara is to disseminate good news about Israel, largely independent of whether the news is true or not.
Jonathan Cook
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It is an honour of a kind, I suppose, to briefly have the most active thread on the Comment is free site. But not much of one when 95% of the posts rarely rose above the level of vitriolic name-calling. The posters probably know that by now I am immune to playground taunts of "scum" and "Nazi", but the abuse, I suspect, is meant more as a warning to others who might criticise Israel. Keep quite - or else.Volcanic outbursts of hatred on Cif greet anyone who objects to Israel's policies: in my case, I sinned by pointing out that its leaders have turned the small community of Jews in Tehran into pawns in a struggle to persuade the world that Iran is a genocidal threat to world Jewry.
My point was that Israel's concern is entirely hollow. It simply wants to mobilise support for an attack on Iran, either by itself or the US. Some posters to this site seem to be aware of the organised nature of these critic-bashing campaigns. They note that sites like giyus.org rally the faithful to the cause.
But most posters are probably not aware that giyus and its ilk are only the tip of a much larger effort called "hasbara" by Israel and its supporters. Usually the word is translated as "advocacy for Israel". I call it by its proper name: propaganda. The main goal of hasbara is constantly to disseminate good news about Israel, largely independent of whether the news is true or not, in the hope that over time a benevolent image of Israel will be reinforced. Here's an example: in 2000 it was reported that an Israeli court ruling had ended the country's system of land apartheid, a legally enforced territorial separation that keeps Jewish and Arab citizens apart in most of country.
To this day apologists cite this ruling as proof of equality in Israel, even though the decision only applied to one Arab family, has yet to be enforced, and the Israeli parliament is currently passing legislation to make sure it never is.But the charm offensive is only the upside of their work. The downside is, as Cif posters know well, a relentless campaign to target, discredit and silence critics of Israel. It can take many forms, not only name-calling. I was intrigued to see several posters thought I had no right to criticise Israel because my wife is an Israeli citizen, though - and this is presumably her and my offence - she also happens to be a Palestinian. They would have a field day - but fail to see their own double standards - were I to suggest that only non-Jews be allowed to apologise for Israel.
A few posters made what appeared to be a substantive point: why had I failed to note that, while today 25,000 Jews live in Tehran, another 80,000 have fled? But look closer and the case crumbles. The overwhelming majority of those 80,000 Jews left in the wake of the country's Islamic revolution in 1979 - that is, nearly 30 years ago. They are irrelevant to Israel's current claims that the Iranian leadership is preparing to commit a genocide against the Jews. In any case, most of those fleeing Jews left because they were middle class and secular and saw no future in an Islamic state, despite reassurances from Ayatollah Khomeini that they would left in peace. In other words, they left - like many other Iranians - for economic reasons, not political or religious ones.
Other posters simply lied, in the great tradition of hasbara. Several suggested I had written that Rafik Hariri was killed by Israel. I hadn't, and you can check my website to be sure. I had also apparently written that the two Israeli soldiers killed in a Hizbullah operation last year were caught on Lebanese soil. Again a search failed to find the story. No matter. Truth is not what hasbara is about. And if all this fails to discredit a critic of Israel, simply label him an anti-semite, and the argument can be closed. Game, set and match.
I am not sure if any other country or cause encourages this kind of mainly voluntary propaganda work, but I am sure that no other country or cause has the human resources that Israel can rely on to carry it out. There are thousands of people sitting at their computers ready to pounce. (I know because I have received abusive emails from them, unless it's just a handful with thousands of different email addresses.) They do not need orders or much guidance. They do it because they love Israel and see it as part of their life's work to protect Israel's image. Doubtless, they believe what they write too. If you have been raised to live in constant fear of anti-semitism, and to see an anti-semitic impulse lurking in the recessses of every non-Jewish mind (an observation that is often publicly made in the Israeli and American media but less often here), then what other motive could someone like me have but anti-semitism for writing what I do? The logic is satisfyingly circular.
But Cif posters may be less aware of how the rest of the Israel lobby works. Giyus is, in fact, the most amateurish part of its operation. These are the "shock troops" on the front line. They overwhelm by force of numbers only. Far more effective are the lobby's "snipers". They pick off anyone the shock troops have failed to frighten off and whose voice might be heard in places where it matters: particularly in the American media and on US campuses. Tony Judt has recently felt their ire, as have Professors Walt and Mearsheimer.
A separate lobby system, particularly Aipac, is dedicated to intimidating elected American representatives. This obsession with preserving Israel's image in the US is not surprising: the country's fate as an occupying, military power in the Middle East will, after all, be decided in Washington.
In the main, the professional Israel lobby cares little about what is said in the European media, although as British newspaper websites like the Guardian start to penetrate the other side of the Atlantic that is changing. There may yet come a day when we will miss the abusive giyus crowd. The professional Israel lobby have respectable names like Camera (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Reporting in America), Honest Reporting and the Anti-Defamation League.
Camera has a section dedicated to "naming and shaming" some of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East. You'll find a page dedicated to the Guardian's former Jerusalem correspondent, Chris McGreal, after he made the ultimate faux pas of comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa, a country he knows intimately.
There are many who share the honour: the Independent's Donald MacIntyre, Tim McGirk of Time magazine, Molly Moore of the Washington Post, Jim Muir and Kylie Morris of the BBC, Greg Myre and Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times. And that's just a fraction of those whose surname begins with M.
Labels: Neocolonialism
After seven years of rumors and self-serving memoirs, the Israeli media has finally published extracts from an official source about the Camp David negotiations in summer 2000. For the first time it is possible to gauge with some certainty the extent of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's "generous offer" to the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat's reasons for rejecting it.
In addition, the document provides valuable insights into what larger goals Israel hoped to achieve at Camp David and how similar ambitions are driving its policies to this day.
The 26-page paper, leaked to the Haaretz daily, was drafted by the country's political and security establishments in the wake of Camp David as a guide to what separated the parties. Entitled "The Status of the Diplomatic Process with the Palestinians: Points to Update the Incoming Prime Minister," it was prepared in time for the February 2001 general election.
Although this is far from the only account of the Camp David negotiations, it is the first official document explaining what took place -- and one that certainly cannot be accused of being unsympathetic to Israel's positions.The document came to light last month after it was presented to current Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to prepare him for his meeting with the Palestinians at Annapolis. Olmert had agreed, under American pressure, to revive negotiations for the first time since the collapse of Camp David, and the follow-up Taba talks a few months later.
It is clear that, far from reviewing his stance in light of the Camp David impasse, Olmert chose to adopt some of Barak's most hardline positions.The earlier negotiations, in July 2000, were Barak's attempt to wrap up all the outstanding points of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians that had not been addressed during a series of Israeli withdrawals from the occupied territories specified in the Oslo agreements.
Barak, backed by the US president of the time, Bill Clinton, pushed Palestinian Authority President Arafat into the hurried final-status negotiations, even though the Palestinian leader believed more time was needed to build confidence between the two sides. Contrary to the spirit of the Oslo agreements, Israel had doubled the number of illegal settlers in the occupied territories through the 1990s and failed to carry out the promised withdrawals in full.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Israeli document does not acknowledge the most generous offer of all during the six decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the PLO's decision in the late 1980s to renounce its claim to most of the Palestinian homeland, and settle instead for a state in the two separate territories of the West Bank and Gaza -- on only 22 percent of historic Palestine.
So given the massive territorial concession made by the Palestinian leadership 20 years ago, how do Barak's terms compare? The document tells us that Barak insisted on three main principles in agreeing to end the occupation and establish a Palestinian state:
1. Israel's illegal settlement blocs would be kept, with 80 percent of the settlers remaining in the West Bank on land annexed to Israel.
The West Bank constitutes the bulk of any future Palestinian state. According to the document, some eight percent of the territory would have been annexed to Israel to maintain the settlements. In return the Palestinians would have been compensated with a much smaller wedge of Israeli land of much less value, probably in the Negev desert. Israel's proposal required leaving nearly 400,000 Jews living inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem in fortified Settlements connected by settler roads, some linked to Israel and others criss-crossing the territory.
The settlements and the infrastructure to sustain them would have been off-limits to the Palestinians and guarded by the army, creating effectively closed Israeli military zones deep in the West Bank. All of this was a sure recipe for destroying the viability of the proposed Palestinian state. Arafat was being asked to approve a labyrinth of Israeli land corridors that would have consolidated a series of Palestinian ghettoes under the guise of statehood.
2. A wide "security zone," supervised by the Israeli army, would be maintained along the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, from the Dead Sea to the northern Jewish settlement of Meholah.Such a security zone exists already, so we do not need to speculate on what it would look like. A few thousand settlers in the Jordan Valley have ensured that the area, nearly a fifth of the West Bank, has been all but annexed to Israel for decades.
Most Palestinians, apart from those living in the Valley itself, are barred from entering it. The Valley is one of the most fertile areas of the West Bank, its huge agricultural potential currently exploited mainly by Israel. Depriving Palestinians of both territorial and economic control over the Valley would again make the Palestinian state unviable.
3. On East Jerusalem, Israel demanded massive territorial concessions in line with its illegal annexation of the part of the city occupied by Israel in 1967.Israel wanted to maintain territorial contiguity for its illegal settlements in East Jerusalem, home to nearly a quarter of a million Jews, with the Palestinian inhabitants forced as a result into a series of what Haaretz refers to as "bubbles."Maintaining Israel's current expanded municipal borders for Jerusalem would have had two damaging consequences for the Palestinians:
first, it would have severed the city, the economic and touristic hub of any Palestinian state, from the rest of the West Bank;
and second, the large settlements of Maale Adumim and Har Homa, built deep in Palestinian territory but now considered by Israel to be part of Jerusalem, would have remained under Israeli sovereignty. The West Bank would have been cut in half, creating further movement restrictions for Palestinians in the West Bank.
In the Old City, Israel demanded that the Jewish and Armenian quarters and parts of the so-called "sacred basin" outside the walls be annexed to Israel, and that the mosques of the Noble Sanctuary (known as Temple Mount to Jews) be placed under an "ambiguous" sovereignty, doubtless later to be exploited by the stronger party, Israel.
These demands would ensure that Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem were carved up into a series of ghettoes, a mirror image of Israeli policies in the West Bank. In addition, Israel hoped Camp David would belatedly legitimize its annexation and ethnic cleansing in 1967 of an area of the West Bank close to Jerusalem called the Latrun Salient. Today the area has been transformed by the Jewish National Fund into an "Israeli" nature reserve called Canada Park using tax-exempt donations from Canadians. The sum effect of these "generous" proposals was to offer the Palestinians far less than the remaining 22 percent of their historic homeland.
They would have had to subtract from a state in Gaza and the West Bank large parts of the expanded municipality of Jerusalem, as well as the Latrun Salient, eight percent of the West Bank to accommodate the settlements, and a further 20 percent for a security zone in the Jordan Valley. In other words, the Palestinians were being asked to sign up to a deal that would give them a very compromised sovereignty over no more than about 14 percent of their historic homeland -- or something very similar to the Bantustans that have been created for them before and since Camp David by the growth of the settlements and the creeping annexation of their land by the separation wall.
In return for Barak's "generosity," what counter-demands did the Palestinians make that scuppered the talks and thereby "unmasked" Arafat, as Barak and Clinton have long maintained? What damning evidence is cited? The Palestinians, according to the document, were willing to accommodate Israel's "demographic needs" and agree to border changes. They insisted on two conditions, however: that Israel's annexation of the West Bank not exceed 2.3 percent of the territory, and that any land swap be based on the principle of equality. Israel, it seems, could not accept either term.
The Palestinians also wanted the land corridor connecting the two parts of their state, the West Bank and Gaza, to be under their sovereignty, presumably so that such connections could not be severed at Israeli whim. In addition, Arafat expected the usual trappings of statehood: an army and control of Palestinian airspace. Israel opposed all these demands.Concerning Jerusalem, the Palestinians wanted an "open city," much in line with the original United Nations Partition Plan of 1947, connected to both the Israeli and Palestinian hinterlands.
The Palestinians objected to the prospect of living in "bubbles" and demanded instead territorial contiguity in East Jerusalem. They also wanted most of the Armenian quarter in the Old City, though appear to have been ready to cede the Jewish quarter ethnically cleansed of Palestinians in 1967. On the other major contentious issue, Arafat wanted Israel to admit sole responsibility for the Palestinian refugees created by the 1948 war.
The document, however, notes that the Palestinians "showed understanding of the sensitivity of the issue for Israel, and willingness to find a formulation that would balance these feelings with their national needs." This suggested at the very least that the Palestinian leadership was willing to do a deal on the refugees. According to some critics, Barak entered the Camp David negotiations in bad faith, setting the bar so high that Israel and the Palestinians were bound to fail to reach an agreement. But why would Barak want, or at least risk, such an outcome? The document suggests two related reasons. First, it notes that parallel to his preparations for Camp David Barak was working on a "separation" plan if the talks failed. The scheme was ready by June 2000, a month before the negotiations, and was approved by the cabinet in the immediate wake of the intifada, in October 2000.
According to Haaretz, Barak's separation proposal encompassed all aspects of Palestinian life and was to be implemented over several years. Many of these secret dealings by Barak are recorded , including the fact that his deputy defense minister, Ephraim Sneh, drew up a "separation map" shortly before Camp David. Shlomo Ben Ami, Barak's chief negotiator at the talks, observed later: "He [Barak] was very proud of the fact that his map would leave Israel with about a third of the [West Bank] territory." According to Ben Ami, the prime minister said of the ghettoes he intended to leave behind for the Palestinians: "Look, this is a state; to all its intents and purposes, it looks like a state."After Barak lost office in early 2001, he lobbied publicly first for unilateral separation and later for disengagement.
His military mentor and successor as prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was persuaded reluctantly to abandon his maximalist positions and settle for Barak's plan. He agreed to separation's logical outcome, the West Bank wall, in summer 2002, and to disengagement from Gaza in early 2004. From the document, it seems clear that Barak and much of the Israeli leadership assumed from the outset that they would need to cage the Palestinians into ghettoes, or Bantustans familiar from South African apartheid.
The failure of Camp David simply gave Barak and his successors the pretext to implement the policy.Second, the document reveals that Barak made a demand of Arafat he must have known the Palestinian leader could not accept. Barak wanted formal recognition not of Israel, but of Israel as a Jewish state. Much more than semantics depended on extracting this concession. It required of Arafat that he renounce the rights of two groups that constitute the overwhelming majority of Palestinians. Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would have forfeited the right -- protected by international law and United Nations resolutions -- of the refugees to the homes they were ethnically cleansed from by the Israeli army in 1948. Their right of return, whether realized in practice or not, has been sacrosanct for Palestinians ever since. And recognition would have further condemned more than one million Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent status as marginalized outsiders in an ethnic state that privileges the rights of Jews over non-Jews.
In effect, Arafat was being asked to give his blessing to Israel's attempts to outlaw the Palestinian minority's campaign for the country's reform into a "state of all its citizens" -- or a liberal democracy. Both Olmert and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, were briefed about the Camp David document before they met current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at Annapolis. It is therefore notable that, rather than abandoning a demand that had wrecked the Camp David talks, both made recognition of Israel as a Jewish state a deal-clincher before the two sides had even met. Also interesting is that, whereas Barak was reluctant to divulge the demand he made of Arafat at Camp David, Olmert's government has been trumpeting it from the rooftops.
Why the about-turn? The most likely explanation is that Barak expected Camp David to fail and was fearful that his demand for recognition might give away Israel's ulterior motives. Olmert, on the other hand, has succeeded in dressing up recognition of Israel as a Jewish state as the ultimate test of whether the Palestinians are serious about accepting a two-state solution. It is a maneuver he mastered last year when he needed to turn world opinion against Hamas following its election victory.In truth, Israel's need for recognition as a Jewish state is proof that it is not a democratic state, but rather an ethnic state that needs to defend racist privilege through the gerrymandering of borders and population.
But in practice Olmert may yet use the recognition test to back Abbas, a weak and unrepresentative Palestinian leader, into the very corner that Arafat avoided. Before Annapolis, Livni declared: "It must be clear to everyone that the State of Israel is a national homeland for the Jewish people," adding that Israel's Palestinian citizens would have to abandon their claim for equality the moment the Palestinian leadership agreed to statehood on Israel's terms.
Olmert framed the Annapolis negotiations in much the same way. It was about creating two nations, he said: "the State of Israel -- the nation of the Jewish people; and the Palestinian state -- the nation of the Palestinian people." The great fear, Olmert has repeatedly pointed out, is that the Palestinians may wake up one day and realize that, after the disappointments of Oslo and Camp David, Israel will never concede to them viable statehood.
The better course, they may decide, is a South African-style struggle for one-person, one-vote in a single democratic state. Olmert warned of this threat on another recent occasion: "The choice ... is between a Jewish state on part of the Land of Israel, and a binational state on all of the Land of Israel." Faced with this danger, Olmert, like Sharon and Barak before him, has come to appreciate that Israel urgently needs to persuade Abbas to sign up to the two-state option. Not, of course, for two democratic, or even viable, states, but for a racist Jewish state alongside a Palestinian ghetto-state.
Labels: Israel Democracy
On the Zionist Settlement Enterprise
I am starting with some of my assumptions.
From its inception the Zionist movement in its statist form threatened the aspirations of the emerging Arab nationalist movement, and the vast majority of the Palestinian residents. The increasing settlement of Jews in Palestine with the express purpose of that settlement being a Jewish state was obviously opposed to the national self-determination of the native population.
Of course, given the context of nationalism, colonialism, and orientalism, etc., Zionism was understandable, and I am not for a minute casting aspersion on the morality of the political Zionists. (On the contrary, the view of Zionism as a national liberation movement is one I basically may accept – as long as that liberation is not at the expense of another people with claims at least as equal.)
Hence , the resistance of Arab nationalists to Jewish nationalism was entirely reasonable.
Hence , the resistance of Arab nationalists to Jewish nationalism was entirely reasonable.
Israel is now nervous about being swamped with Sudanese refugees. Just imagine how the Zionist would feel if those refugees claimed that they were coming home to rebuild their ancient homeland.
Even if one accepts the justice of some Zionist claims, those claims would have to be balanced with the claims of the native population, who had every reason to believe, especially following the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire, that in the normal course of things, a Palestinian state would arise that would reflect the makeup of the majority of its inhabitants.
Irreconcilable claims are often settled through a reasonable compromise mediated by outsiders. In retrospect, the Arabs miscalculated badly in rejecting partition, but that rejection was understandable. The Zionists miscalculated badly by rejecting partition after they got the upper hand, but that rejection was also understandable. In any event, the UN ratification of the partition plan did not justify the unilateral declaration of independence in 1948, much less the failure to relinquish territory achieved in war, much less the horrible decision not to let the Palestinian refugees return to their homes.
And now for the question of Zionist settlements. I am not here talking about private ownership but of national sovereignty. (Important distinction. )
Land held by Jewish individuals or companies prior to 1948 should in no way have been seen as automatically belonging to a future Jewish state. If I buy a house “for the Jewish people” in Kansas with the intention of that land being part of a future Jewish state, then this purchase doesn’t advance that claim. Of course, if Jews live in the house, then a democratic government should represent them. But what makes territory part of the state is recognition of that fact, based on international law, treaties, etc.
Territory acquired as a result of the 1948 war belongs to the State of Israel by force of that land being recognized by the countries of the world, and by the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people, as under Israeli sovereignty. This includes the land that was acquired in the 1948 war beyond the UN Partition borders. Without such recognition, this territory remains disputed territory. In the eyes of Hamas, for example, it remains disputed, just as in the eyes of some Israelis, the West Bank remains disputed.
Still, I believe that the Israel’s sovereignty over such land is as provisional as are its borders. Until a treaty is signed and Israel has recognized borders, everything, in principle, is up for grabs -- including Sheikh Yunis
Territory acquired after 1967 is universally viewed by international bodies as Occupied Territory. That includes, areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
Some conclusions I draw from the above:
1. What counts when it comes to sovereignty is not just what the Zionist think but what everybody thinks, i.e., the Palestinians and the world. At the moment, the vast majority of the world, including the Palestinian people, including Hamas, are willing to conclude some sort of peace settlement with Israel on the basis of the 1948 armistice lines. While there is nothing holy about these lines, they are a convenient starting point because of international recognition and the passage of time.
2. That there are Jews and Christians who believe that Israel has a historical claim to Judea and Shomron means as much to me as that there are Iraqis who believe that Iraq has a historical claim to Kuwait. (I am not referring here to the religious question of Eretz Yisrael, which I find utterly irrelevant to Zionism. )
3. Every step that Israel takes with respect to settlement inside the green line should be done taking into account its implications for bilateral relations with the Palestinian national entity.
4. No Israelis should be settled on post-67 occupied territory against the wishes of the Palestinian people, and in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. I think that Israelis have the right and the responsibility to negotiate for settlement for Jews – for example, the Jewish settlement in the Jewish Quarter – but as part of a peace settlement, and not unilaterally by the occupying power.
I wish I had time to argue these points, but I don’t. I haven’t said enough about the morality of the Zionist settlement program. That is a difficult topic, but I think that parts of the settlement program was justifiable in light of the norms and expectations of the time, many of which are no longer relevant.
Again, I am talking about national sovereignty.
So, it is only legitimate for Israelis to settle territories that are within their recognized national sovereignty, than for those that are without. Settlements outside must conform to the guidelines of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as generally interpreted.
So, it is only legitimate for Israelis to settle territories that are within their recognized national sovereignty, than for those that are without. Settlements outside must conform to the guidelines of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as generally interpreted.
Labels: Illegal Settlements
Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism
Although I've referenced the August 2006 document below in the past, I see that I never provided the text--an omission I now correct.
'Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.' (Matthew 5:9)
Christian Zionism is a modern theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism, thereby becoming detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel. The Christian Zionist programme provides a worldview where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism. In its extreme form, it laces an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ's love and justice today.
We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.
We further reject the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organisations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine. This inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of all peoples of the Middle East and the rest of the world.
We further reject the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organisations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine. This inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of all peoples of the Middle East and the rest of the world.
We reject the teachings of Christian Zionism that facilitate and support these policies as they advance racial exclusivity and perpetual war rather than the gospel of universal love, redemption and reconciliation taught by Jesus Christ. Rather than condemn the world to the doom of Armageddon we call upon everyone to liberate themselves from the ideologies of militarism and occupation.
Instead, let them pursue the healing of the nations!
We call upon Christians in Churches on every continent to pray for the Palestinian and Israeli people, both of whom are suffering as victims of occupation and militarism. These discriminative actions are turning Palestine into impoverished ghettos surrounded by exclusive Israeli settlements. The establishment of the illegal settlements and the construction of the Separation Wall on confiscated Palestinian land undermines the viability of a Palestinian state as well as peace and security in the entire region.
We call upon all Churches that remain silent, to break their silence and speak for reconciliation with justice in the Holy Land.
Therefore, we commit ourselves to the following principles as an alternative way:
We affirm that all people are created in the image of God. In turn they are called to honour the dignity of every human being and to respect their inalienable rights.
We affirm that Israelis and Palestinians are capable of living together within peace, justice and security.
We affirm that Palestinians are one people, both Muslim and Christian. We reject all attempts to subvert and fragment their unity.
We call upon all people to reject the narrow world view of Christian Zionism and other ideologies that privilege one people at the expense of others.
We are committed to non-violent resistance as the most effective means to end the illegal occupation in order to attain a just and lasting peace.
With urgency we warn that Christian Zionism and its alliances are justifying colonisation, apartheid and empire-building.
God demands that justice be done. No enduring peace, security or reconciliation is possible without the foundation of justice. The demands of justice will not disappear. The struggle for justice must be pursued diligently and persistently but non-violently.
'What does the Lord require of you, to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.' (Micah 6:8)
This is where we take our stand. We stand for justice. We can do no other. Justice alone guarantees a peace that will lead to reconciliation with a life of security and prosperity for all the peoples of our Land.
By standing on the side of justice, we open ourselves to the work of peace - and working for peace makes us children of God.
'God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.' (2 Cor 5:19)
His Beattitude Patriarch Michel SabbahLatin Patriarchate, Jerusalem
Archbishop Swerios Malki Mourad,Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate, Jerusalem
Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal,Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East
Bishop Munib Younan,Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land
Labels: Nationalism
Saturday, December 15, 2007
I was able to find an English version of a Hebrew op-ed in Haaretz.
The op-ed was by one a prominent Israeli Jewish lawyer, Michael Sfard, who represents Palestinians in suits against the settlers. It was a response to another op-ed by Haaretz journalist, Yair Sheleg, who represents the views of the moderate religious right. Sheleg asserted that he was willing to concede territory for the sake of a peace agreement, and he even conceded that ruling over a people against their will was morally defective. What concerned Sheleg was that instead of focusing on peace, and on the benefits it would bring Israeli society, the Israeli leftwing concentrates on the damage wrought by the settlers. Sheleg finds this incomprehensible; as a group, the settlers are no more violent or break the law than other sectors of Israeli society. The example that Sheleg gives is of the secularists who sell merchandise at busy intersections on Shabbat.
Sfard, in the subsequent paragraphs of his op-ed, rips Yair Sheleg's arguments and comparison to shreds. Talk of peace but leave the settlers out? Not when a necessary condition of peace is stopping the organized and ideological crimes of the settlers, often under the protection of the army, against the Palestinians. Sfard lists crime after crime of the settlers, crimes that are familiar to any reader of Haaretz, certainly to Sheleg. How one can talk of peace and not talk about the illegality and immorality of the settlers? From land theft, to physical brutality, to the simple attitudes of lordship over the Palestinian population -- all these are much more important to discuss than peace.
"One serious and forthright discussion about the crimes of the violent sector of the settlers is preferable to countless speeches about "peace". The Israeli public does not need more slogans about how wonderful it will be here if peace would only come. What it needs is a public, penetrating internal examination that will deal with the fascist and racist ideology that guides most of the ideological settlers (and not just the loonies of the outposts), the creation of an organized crime that undermines the sovereignty of the Israeli government, and, of course, a discussion about the moral depths to which the settlers are leading all of us."
Sfard goes on to classify the crimes of the settlers as "hate crimes". Their perpetrators are not thinking of ways how to circumvent the law, as are those who sell merchandise on the Sabbath, which is illegal in Israel. The settlers violate the law with pride.
The criminality of the settlers is different from the criminality of those who sell at crowded intersections on the Sabbath (if one can call that criminality.) Whoever believes in the defense of human rights and making progress towards coexistence between peoples cannot be satisfied with phantasies of peace. He first has to stop the madness of the settlers.
Many of my readers will think that the above is self-evident. It is a pity that you don't read the "talk-backs" to Sfard. It is not self-evident to many Israelis. It is not self-evident to Yair Sheleg, who is not a Kahanist or a blatant racist. It is not self-evident to AIPAC and the Israeli lobby.
Not Peace Now, but Justice Now, Morality Now, Dignity Now.
The belief in the peace that will come "next year" is a secular Israeli substitution for the traditional Jewish belief in the future Coming of the Messiah -- a point emphasized by the right wing, who likes to talk about the false messianism of Peace Now. And they are correct -- it is a false messianism, because it allows us to postpone dealing with the present state of injustice as long as we concentrate on the future state of peace.
The dirty truth about messianism is that all messianism is false messianism. As Yeshayahu Leibowitz used to say, the traditional Jew believes with all his heart that the Messiah WILL come, but the traditional Jew almost never believes that he actually comes -- and when he does, it ends disastrously for Judaism.
Where was Peace Now -- where was I -- during the Oslo years, when thousands of dunams of land were confiscated and expropriated from the Palestinians for the building of temporary bypass roads -- the first step in the horrible and immoral unilateral separation (again, much worse that S. African apartheid) that has been taking place, and is taken place? All this was justified by the exigencies of peace. How many times have we heard the claim that only when peace comes will we be able to remove the walls, normalize relations? How many times have we heard that we can hardly expect Israelis to behave decently toward the Palestinians when they are at war with them?
But you are always at war with them. You have been at war with them for sixty years. Your national existence is defined by that war.
I don't believe that doing the right thing can be postponed indefinitely. War is hell, and by its very nature immoral. Sometimes it is necessary, I know; I am not a pacifist. The internment of Japanese Americans in WWII was a horrible stain on the United States, and cannot be eliminated. But the crime lasted for five years. We are now talking about a sixty year war, a sixty year occupation, the last forty of which has no legitimacy at all.
It is time that people stop promising to put away the bullets one day and start biting them now. And the bullet that I am prepared to bite is this:
If I thought for a minute that there was no alternative for the State of Israel than to preserve the status quo until peace came, then the State of Israel would OBVIOUSLY be illegitimate. A no-brainer. For no state, no people, has the right to self-determination in the form of a state, at the expense of another people with at least equal claims. It certainly does not have the right to rule over another people by force. If the alternative is packing it up, and closing the shop on the regime founded in 1948, then I cannot understand how any moral person would not choose that alternative.
No Zionist leader, from Herzl to Jabotinsky, ever envisioned a situation in which the Hebrews, in order to have a safe and secure state, would need to keep millions of Palestinians without human and citizen rights. No British government would have proclaimed a Balfour Declaration; no UN would have agreed to a Hebrews State. Nobody would have considered it legitimate. Why, then, now?
As for my critical comments about Peace Now -- I know that the peaceniks are good, moral people, and I don't want to cast aspersions on their morality or their dedication. I know that they want to end the Occupation and that they work hard to do so, harder than I do.
But Justice Now, Dignity Now, Morality Now -- these are the "nows" that are in my blood.
Sorry for the emotional tone. I haven't written for close to a week, and all that stuff exploded on the screen....
The op-ed was by one a prominent Israeli Jewish lawyer, Michael Sfard, who represents Palestinians in suits against the settlers. It was a response to another op-ed by Haaretz journalist, Yair Sheleg, who represents the views of the moderate religious right. Sheleg asserted that he was willing to concede territory for the sake of a peace agreement, and he even conceded that ruling over a people against their will was morally defective. What concerned Sheleg was that instead of focusing on peace, and on the benefits it would bring Israeli society, the Israeli leftwing concentrates on the damage wrought by the settlers. Sheleg finds this incomprehensible; as a group, the settlers are no more violent or break the law than other sectors of Israeli society. The example that Sheleg gives is of the secularists who sell merchandise at busy intersections on Shabbat.
Sfard, in the subsequent paragraphs of his op-ed, rips Yair Sheleg's arguments and comparison to shreds. Talk of peace but leave the settlers out? Not when a necessary condition of peace is stopping the organized and ideological crimes of the settlers, often under the protection of the army, against the Palestinians. Sfard lists crime after crime of the settlers, crimes that are familiar to any reader of Haaretz, certainly to Sheleg. How one can talk of peace and not talk about the illegality and immorality of the settlers? From land theft, to physical brutality, to the simple attitudes of lordship over the Palestinian population -- all these are much more important to discuss than peace.
"One serious and forthright discussion about the crimes of the violent sector of the settlers is preferable to countless speeches about "peace". The Israeli public does not need more slogans about how wonderful it will be here if peace would only come. What it needs is a public, penetrating internal examination that will deal with the fascist and racist ideology that guides most of the ideological settlers (and not just the loonies of the outposts), the creation of an organized crime that undermines the sovereignty of the Israeli government, and, of course, a discussion about the moral depths to which the settlers are leading all of us."
Sfard goes on to classify the crimes of the settlers as "hate crimes". Their perpetrators are not thinking of ways how to circumvent the law, as are those who sell merchandise on the Sabbath, which is illegal in Israel. The settlers violate the law with pride.
The criminality of the settlers is different from the criminality of those who sell at crowded intersections on the Sabbath (if one can call that criminality.) Whoever believes in the defense of human rights and making progress towards coexistence between peoples cannot be satisfied with phantasies of peace. He first has to stop the madness of the settlers.
Many of my readers will think that the above is self-evident. It is a pity that you don't read the "talk-backs" to Sfard. It is not self-evident to many Israelis. It is not self-evident to Yair Sheleg, who is not a Kahanist or a blatant racist. It is not self-evident to AIPAC and the Israeli lobby.
Not Peace Now, but Justice Now, Morality Now, Dignity Now.
The belief in the peace that will come "next year" is a secular Israeli substitution for the traditional Jewish belief in the future Coming of the Messiah -- a point emphasized by the right wing, who likes to talk about the false messianism of Peace Now. And they are correct -- it is a false messianism, because it allows us to postpone dealing with the present state of injustice as long as we concentrate on the future state of peace.
The dirty truth about messianism is that all messianism is false messianism. As Yeshayahu Leibowitz used to say, the traditional Jew believes with all his heart that the Messiah WILL come, but the traditional Jew almost never believes that he actually comes -- and when he does, it ends disastrously for Judaism.
Where was Peace Now -- where was I -- during the Oslo years, when thousands of dunams of land were confiscated and expropriated from the Palestinians for the building of temporary bypass roads -- the first step in the horrible and immoral unilateral separation (again, much worse that S. African apartheid) that has been taking place, and is taken place? All this was justified by the exigencies of peace. How many times have we heard the claim that only when peace comes will we be able to remove the walls, normalize relations? How many times have we heard that we can hardly expect Israelis to behave decently toward the Palestinians when they are at war with them?
But you are always at war with them. You have been at war with them for sixty years. Your national existence is defined by that war.
I don't believe that doing the right thing can be postponed indefinitely. War is hell, and by its very nature immoral. Sometimes it is necessary, I know; I am not a pacifist. The internment of Japanese Americans in WWII was a horrible stain on the United States, and cannot be eliminated. But the crime lasted for five years. We are now talking about a sixty year war, a sixty year occupation, the last forty of which has no legitimacy at all.
It is time that people stop promising to put away the bullets one day and start biting them now. And the bullet that I am prepared to bite is this:
If I thought for a minute that there was no alternative for the State of Israel than to preserve the status quo until peace came, then the State of Israel would OBVIOUSLY be illegitimate. A no-brainer. For no state, no people, has the right to self-determination in the form of a state, at the expense of another people with at least equal claims. It certainly does not have the right to rule over another people by force. If the alternative is packing it up, and closing the shop on the regime founded in 1948, then I cannot understand how any moral person would not choose that alternative.
No Zionist leader, from Herzl to Jabotinsky, ever envisioned a situation in which the Hebrews, in order to have a safe and secure state, would need to keep millions of Palestinians without human and citizen rights. No British government would have proclaimed a Balfour Declaration; no UN would have agreed to a Hebrews State. Nobody would have considered it legitimate. Why, then, now?
As for my critical comments about Peace Now -- I know that the peaceniks are good, moral people, and I don't want to cast aspersions on their morality or their dedication. I know that they want to end the Occupation and that they work hard to do so, harder than I do.
But Justice Now, Dignity Now, Morality Now -- these are the "nows" that are in my blood.
Sorry for the emotional tone. I haven't written for close to a week, and all that stuff exploded on the screen....
Labels: The Zone where the natives live
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Jewish Media Mistranslates Hamas Statement on Anniversary of the UN Partition Resolution
There are many reasons to dislike Hamas. But it annoys me when people who should know better distort their position by mistranslating Arabic.
Richard Olam blog reprinted an item from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which claimed that Hamas had issued the following statement last Thursday, on the 60th anniversary of the UN Partition vote
"Palestine is Arab Islamic land, from the river to the sea, including Jerusalem... there is no room in it for the Jews."
Richard was skeptical of the accuracy of the translation, and, as we shall see, he had good reason to be. The source may have been an article in Maariv by Itamar Inbar. (Here is the NRG website.)
He translated the passage from the Arabic as follows (my English translation):
"Palestine is Arabic Islamic land, from the River to the Sea, including Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Churches, the Mosques, the Mountains, and the Beaches." In Hamas they said, "The Jews have no place in it (Palestine- I.I), and it is a single unity that is indivisbile." So, there you have it -- doesn't it seem that Hamas is calling for the elimination of the Jews from Palestine?
"Palestine is Arabic Islamic land, from the River to the Sea, including Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Churches, the Mosques, the Mountains, and the Beaches." In Hamas they said, "The Jews have no place in it (Palestine- I.I), and it is a single unity that is indivisbile." So, there you have it -- doesn't it seem that Hamas is calling for the elimination of the Jews from Palestine?
Except that this is not what the Arabic plainly says.
What Hamas said is as follows: and this is about as literal as I can make it:
Palestine is an Arabic Islamic country from time immemorial, from its River to its Sea, with its Jerusalem, its Al-Aksa, its churches and its mosques, the Jews not having a presence in it. It is a single unity and is indivisible."
In other words, historically, Palestine was an Arab country with no Jewish presence; hence, the Jews have no national claims to it. The phrase laysa li-l-yahud fiha wujud, literally means "the Jews having no presence/existence in it" -- but as it was pointed out to me in a private communication, the phrase "mundhu al-azal" (lit.: since eternity), apparently puts the phrase in the past tense.
There is a difference between saying, "There is no room for the Jews in Palestine" and "The Jews have never been a presence in Palestine." By mistranslating wujud and by leaving out the mundhu al-azal, and by breaking up the quotation, Inbar (deliberately?) distorted the translation.
A more accurate portrayal of the sense of the Arabic in English (thought not a direct translation) comes from Hamas' website:
"Hamas affirmed that Palestine is an Arab, Islamic country since time immemorial and Jews have no right whatsoever in the land of Palestine,"
I.e., no national rights -- since they had no presence.
Look, I think that it is false to say that the Jews had no presence. But it is not false to say that for much of the middle ages and early modern period their physical presence was minimal. It certainly is not the same as saying that there will be no room for the Jews in an Islamic state. That statement goes against the Hamas Charter, antisemitic as it is, that allows for Jews and Christians to live under in an Islamic state (not something I look forward to....)
doesn't truth count anymore? Or is distortion ok when fighting the wars of the Lord?
Whose name, by the way, is Truth.
The Arabic text is reported here, by the way. (Thanks to Amir for providing the links.)
Labels: The Zone where the natives live
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