Would Somebody Help Me Out Here?

I am unable to understand the logic of those Israel supporters who say that they regrettably have no choice but to accept the West Bank status quo. I am referring to those who say, "Look, we Israelis have no desire to rule over 3 ½ million Palestinians. But, unfortunately, we have no alternative but to continue the current situation that, admittedly, will make life miserable for the Palestinians and will arouse their hatred of us. They are responsible for the mess they are in. They could have had a state or something like it. Instead they sent suicide bombers. We would be crazy to unilaterally withdraw – just see what has happened in Gaza."

I am not bothered by the fact that the argument rests on the following questionable assumptions:

1. Were it not for the security issue Israelis would be willing to have a Palestinian state next to them on the Green Line.
2. The threat to Israel from the Palestinians is greater than Israel's threat to them.
3. Israel bears no responsibility for the breakdown of the Oslo Peace Process, the Intifada al-Aksa, or the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
4. The Palestinians were offered a State at Camp David/Taba/Annapolis.
5. The Palestinians want an immediate and unilateral Israeli withdrawal.

Every one of these assumptions is debatable. I believe them to be false and that Israelis deceive themselves when they claim to accept them. But that's not what bothers me.

What bothers me is that even if we grant all these propositions, I don't see how they justify the West Bank status quo.

Even if we assume that the Palestinians were offered a state at Camp David/Taba, and that they turned it down because they want to destroy Israel, and that they have the power to destroy Israel through terrorism, and that they are responsible for the whole mess they are in – why does it follow that we have the right to conduct massive human rights offenses against them indefinitely?

One could respond that a) Palestinians have collectively forfeited their human rights or b) our human rights trump their human rights, or c) the existence of a Jewish state justifies the massive and indefinite human rights violation of another people. Any of those additional propositions would help the argument go through. But not a whole lot of Israel advocates want to be explicit about a), b), or c). Rather they minimize the human rights violations, calling them "inconveniences" or "unintended" or "regrettable" or "not our responsibility".

I don't understand these guys. Much more consistent are the rightwing Israelis who simply say that the Palestinians don't act like humans and therefore can be abused if necessary.

Why should Israel's right to exist trump the right to exist of the Palestinians, for that matter, any other alternative?

It seems to me that the only morally justifiable answer is that no matter how bad the current situation is, any other situation would be worse for both peoples. If you can show that the Israeli occupation is better for the Palestinians than their own government would then that answer have some purchase.

Has anybody seen that answer argued somewhere? I haven't.

More Settler Harrassment of Human Rights Activists

In recent weeks, as Jewish and non-Jewish human-rights groups have increased efforts to publicize Israel's human rights violation on the West Bank, and to help Palestinians with the annual olive harvest, some settlers are becoming more vocal and more violent. Their tactic: disrupt tours sponsored by activists, and then file trumped-up complaints against them. These complaints are routinely dismissed, but they tie up the activists' time, and they discourage people from turning out for the tours.

I received this yesterday from an activist, and it refers to the harrassment of a Rabbis for Human Rights field worker. RHR is now helping in the olive harvest and need volunteers.

Last week, Zacaria Sadah, field worker for Rabbis for Human Rights, along with an RHR volunteer, were chased by cars driven by Itai Zar and settlers from the Havat Gilead outpost who sought to drive them from the road. When RHR called the police, the police arrested Sadah and the volunteer based on a complaint by Zar that Sadah had started a fire in Havat G il ead. They have been jailed for the evening and will be brought to court tomorrow.

Sadah and the volunteer were not in the vicinity of the fire. Farmers from the Palestinian village of Tel have been working today at the intersection of the approach road to Havat Gilead and, thus, were not in the area of the fire. Despite our complaints none of the settlers were arrested.

It should be pointed out that this is not the first time that Itai Zar has made false accusations against the staff and volunteers of Rabbis for Human Rights. Three years ago he accused RHR's former field worker of attacking him, but police photographs showed that this was not the case.

For Arik Ascherman's recent follow-up, see here

And please take a minute to look at the Youtube clip posted two days ago. You see how the extremist Noam Federman, a former leader of the Kach party, breaks up a tour led by Bne Avraham that has stopped next to the grave of the mass-murderer Barukh Goldstein's. As you will see in the video, Federman shoves the tour-leader (a complaint of assault was subsequently filed), and drowns out the tourguide's explanations. Federman later charged that Yehudah Shaul, who is known here as the founder of "Breaking the Silence" was attempting to urinate on the grave. The charge is absurd, but it has to be answered -- counter-complaints were filed.

Please circulate the video. Of course, there are much worse on Youtube. Do a search on Hebron or settlers, and what you see will nauseate you.

Why do Jews only mobilize for Darfur, when these things are happening in their back yard --and in their name?

Jews, Power, and Garbage: Part One

I haven't finished looking at the Sunday Times, but I did manage to see two items of interest.

First is Steve Erlanger's frontpage story, "West Bank Boys Dig a Living in Settler Trash," which describes how some Palestinians are quite literally living off the garbage of Jewish settlers out of sheer desparation and poverty.

This is the sort of human interest story one doesn't see enough of in the Times, which usually bashes Israel for making the lives of the Palestinians miserable.

The Zionists always claimed that the Arabs of Palestine would benefit from a Jewish state, and here is the proof: after ruling 3 1/2 million people for forty years without granting them citizen rights, expropriating their lands, restricting their movement, and building walls between their villages and their fields (for the purpose not of security -- ok, not just of security -- but also of providing "living room" for the settlers -- at long last the settlers are doing something for the Palestinians. They are producing garbage that supports the natives -- and the natives aren't paying for it.

The second item is a "review" of Ruth Wisse's new book (published by Nextbooks/Schocken) on Jews and Power, by the British lawyer, Anthony Julius, who has, to my knowledge, no background or professional expertise in Jewish history, but who is not too far from Wisse's ideological camp (more liberal hawk than neocon): he has been sponsored by the ADL in speaking out against the so-called "new antisemitism," and wrote a thesis and book on antisemitism in T.S. Eliot.

Not surprisingly, the review is positive, without a single word of criticism, but that may be simply the nature of a Julius-Nextbook-NY Times review.

You see, Julius reviewed for the Times Sherwin Nuland's book on Maimonides, also published by Nextbooks, showing that just as you don't have to be a Maimonides expert to write a book about him (Nuland is a Yale physician and not a Maimonides scholar), you don't have to be one to write a review, either.

But there is something in the puff that caught my eye. The London barrister writes:

Certainly, the book reads as a setting-down of conclusions reached across several decades of controversy and reflection. But it also has a certain delicacy, in particular in its openness to alternative histories, alternative political arrangements. “It is worth considering how the Middle East might have evolved had Arab rulers accepted the partition of Palestine,” she writes. There would have been some voluntary shifts of population. Arab Palestine might have federated with Jordan. Regional priorities would have dictated new patterns of trade, commerce and development. Jews and Arabs who wanted to live in the other’s land could have traveled back and forth.

It is good to be reminded of such possibilities by someone who is also such a doughty defender of Israel. It has always been an aspect of Zionism’s utopianism, this vision of Jewish-Arab cooperation, a mutual flourishing in the one region. This book is both an acknowledgment of that openhearted, clearsighted desire for peace, but also — and so to speak — in the meantime, a celebration of the new Jewish ability to await its arrival. If there is not to be peace, Jews at least will be able to defend themselves against their self-declared enemies. This, in the end, is what it means for Jews to have power.

What Wisse is saying that had the Arabs accepted the Partition Plan, then a utopia -- or at least, something a lot better than the present -- would have ensued, in which Jews and Arabs who wanted to live in the other's land could have done so. Note the "delicacy" of the comment about "voluntary shifts of population," i.e., a transfer of natives out of the Jewish-designated area to the Palestinian area (there were few Jews in the Palestinian area to be shifted out of.) This standard Zionist argument is presented by Julius as an "openness to alternative histories, alternative political arrangements"! Alternative to what? Certainly not to straightforward Zionist narrative!

To put Wisse's point differently -- had the Palestinians accepted partition, and cleared out of the Jewish state "voluntarily" -- the ultimate Zionist fantasy -- then peace and harmony would have reigned. There would not be a refugee problem (because of the voluntary "shift" -- such a nice word, that), but a two-state solution.

But that is an entirely unproved assertion. On the contrary, it is arguable that had the Palestinians accepted partition, the Israelis would be today occupying the West Bank and Gaza.

How so?

Well consider that there was a strong irredentist camp of Zionists that opposed the partition plan, and just as strong a camp of Zionists that were unhappy with the 48 armistice lines, and who were prepared to take the West Bank at the first opportunity. Consider that Ben Gurion himself said that the acceptance of the partition plan was only tactical, a first stage in the conquest. Consider that the newly founded State of Israel never formally accepted partition and worked against it. Consider the 1956 invasion of Sinai and the 1967 invasion of the West Bank, despite the armistice lines.

Now: even if these military operations were absolutely justified in Israel's eyes, they happened, did they not? And who can guarantee that they would not have happened had the Arabs accepted partition?

The "woulda-coulda-shoulda" school of history is part of the propaganda war. It may be true that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, as Eban said. But it is also true that the Zionists never refused to offer them an eminently refuseable offer. Of course, the Zionist always considered the offer generous, since they felt that by right all of Palestine belonged to them, including the East Bank of the Jordan.

It is time to put the rest the counterfactual canard that had the Arabs accepted partition, things would have looked better today. We simply don't know that..

According to Avi Shlaim, the Jordanians and the Israelis agreed to split mandatory Palestine to the detriment of the Palestinians -- yet this did not guarantee that Israel would neither invade nor settle the West Bank when the opportunity arose.

It may be that had the Arabs accepted partition, Jews and Arabs would have lived together in harmony. It may be that had the Zionists accepted permanent minority status in a secular Palestine, the two groups would have lived together in harmony. The Zionists rejected minority status; the Arabs rejected partition. No doubt, in retrospect, an Arab acceptance of partition would have placed them in a better position tactically to pursue their aims. It is hard to see that their situation could have been worse.

But arguably in any event they would have been outfinessed by the Zionists, given the power differential.

And that's what it is about, according to Wisse -- power.

The rest is garbage...

A Righteous Man in Sodom -- Dror Etkes.

Haaretz published a good piece today about how the West Bank settlers grab land and keep Palestinian villages from expanding.

Here is the Hebrew link:

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/879100.html

and here is the English link

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/878955.html

The article was written by Amos Harel, who has coauthored the definitive study of how Israel stole and continues to steal Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza.

Let me say off the bat that I can't stand Israelies who demonize the settlers. The immorality of the settlements attaches to the entire Israeli society, me included. I have nothing to say about the morality of the settlers, either, most of whom I put in the "captive children" category (captive of their post-Holocaust trauma and Zionist ideology). Of course, excusing doesn't mean exculpating.

Here is the lead:

"West Bank settlements have been allocated huge amounts of land, but use very little of it, according to a Peace Now report.

"Only nine percent of the area under settlement jurisdiction has been built on, and only 12 percent is being used at all, the report said, citing Civil Administration figures.

"But despite their huge unused land reserves, 90 percent of the settlements exceed their boundaries, and about one-third of the territory they do use lies outside their jurisdiction, the report added.

"The findings attest to the government's ongoing cooperation with the settlements' expansion, Peace Now charged: On one hand, the state earmarks huge tracts for the settlements, out of all all proportion to their size, in order to prevent Palestinian construction in those areas. Yet once an area is closed to Palestinians, the settlers begin seizing adjacent Palestinian lands, often privately owned, that lie outside their jurisdiction."

You know, there is a famous midrash brought by Rashi in the beginning of his commentary on Torah, in which the nations of Canaan accuse the Israelites of stealing the land. "You are listim (thieves)." Now, had the Jews written that midrash today, they would have said thinks like, "No, this is not stealing at all...actually, these territories are disputed; we are administering them; we are able to do things for the benefit of the settlers because of the Fourth Geneva Convention which allows us to do things for the benefit of the inhabitants (even though, technically speaking, it doesn't apply); anyway, we build settlements on public land; the Palestinians themselves have lots of illegal building." Yada, yada, yada.

All the above is crapola. The only real justification I understand is what the Midrash answers: "The earth belongs to the Lord. He decides to whom he can give it. He gave it to you; he can give it to us." (By the way, I wonder what the nations responded to that.)

In other words, if the "Pals" don't like it, they can go to hell, or to Detroit, whichever they prefer. (No anti-Detroit jokes.)

But Israel can't say that, right? And so they have to lie, they have to steal through deception, and they have to do it quietly, so the world -- and even the Israelis -- don't know.

That is why Dror Etkes is one of my heroes. He doesn't sit in Tel-Aviv and kvetch on Shenkin St. He and Hagit Ofran, who is taking over from him, know every piece of land being stolen from the Palestinians in Eretz Yisrael. The evil done in the West Bank can only be done in the dark, like ganavim be-layla.

Will publicizing this stuff succeed? To me, that's not the point. The point is that, like my hero Magnes, he stands up and denounces the immorality and the arrogance of power.