Israel to World: "Suck It."

I don't know that some individual at some pt didn't stab an innocent. However I do know that there has never been a jewish political movement or theological one that excused sanctioned or championed the stabbing of innocents as an appropriate path to political liberation.

― Mordy, Wednesday, October 21, 2015 5:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Never you say?

One particularly extreme group, perhaps a subgroup of the Zealots, was known in Latin as sicarii, meaning "violent men" or "dagger men" (sing. sicarius, possibly a morphological reanalysis), because of their policy of killing Jews opposed to their call for war against Rome. Perhaps many Zealots were sicarii simultaneously, and they may be the biryonim of the Talmud that were feared even by the Jewish sages of the Mishnah.

According to historian H.H. Ben-Sasson, the Sicarii, originally based in Galilee, "were fighting for a social revolution, while the Jerusalem Zealots placed less stress on the social aspect" and the Sicarii "never attached themselves to one particular family and never proclaimed any of their leaders king". Both groups objected to the way the priestly families were running the Temple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealots_(Judea)

massive xpost

I'm saying that the reason negotiations have failed is because the Palestinian identity sees Israelis as colonialists who don't deserve any State in any of historical Palestine, so a two state compromise would undermine that identity. If negotiations succeeded I think that violence against Israelis would continue because the "true" occupation is 1948, not 1967, again because Israelis would not stop being colonizers. They would just have been effectively chased off some of the land they had originally stolen. This also explains why the withdrawal from Gaza increased militant action against Israel and didn't decrease it xp

good call - i was specifically referring to during the diaspora but yes i had forgotten about the zealots xp

Mordy, you're a good person, I really think that. You're smart, you're knowledgable. But I continue to think that that is bigotry, no matter how much you say 'no, but it's also because Israeli would never stop being colonizers!' You're saying that Palestinians would never be able to change their identity, to forgive, or get over their grievances, the way for instance black South Africans 'forgave' apartheid without going on the murderous rampages that Boer-naysayers warned about.

It's quite honestly pretty textbook colonial bigotry, imo. People say that all the time: 'No, but they're so aggrieved now that it would be a bloodbath if we gave them what they wanted'. Used to keep up whatever aggrieves them.

I mean, that is my opinion. I'm just being honest. Sorry.

I cannot take credit for this idea about the competing national narratives. I read it in Haaretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.678483

Most Israelis view the conflict as a struggle between two national movements: the Jewish national movement – Zionism – and the Palestinian national movement as part of the wider Arab national movement. The internal logic of such a view leads in principle to what is called the two-state solution. Even if the Israeli right wing preferred for years to avoid such a view, eventually it has been adopted by Netanyahu, albeit reluctantly, and is now the official policy of his government.

The point is that those Israelis who see the conflict in the framework of a struggle between two national movements assume that this is also the position of the other side; hence when negotiations fail, the recipe advocated is to tinker with some of the details, hoping that further concessions, on one or the other side, will bring about an agreement.

Unfortunately, this is an illusion.

The basic Palestinian position, which usually isn’t always explicitly stated, is totally different and can be easily detected in numerous Palestinian statements. According to the Palestinians’ view, this is not a conflict between two national movements but a conflict between one national movement (the Palestinian) and a colonial and imperialistic entity (Israel). According to this view, Israel will end like all colonial phenomena – it will perish and disappear. Moreover, according to the Palestinian view, the Jews are not a nation but a religious community, and as such not entitled to national self-determination which is, after all, a universal imperative.

According to this view, the Palestinians see all of Israel – and not just the West Bank and Gaza – as analogous to Algeria: an Arab country out of which the foreign colonialists were ultimately expelled. Because of this, Israel – even in its pre-1967 borders – never appears in Palestinian school textbooks; because of this the Palestinians insist never to give up their claim to the right of return of 1948 refugees and their descendants to Israel.

This is also the reason for the Palestinians’ obstinate refusal – from Abbas to Saeb Erekat – to accept Israel as the Jewish nation-state in any way whatsoever. At the end of the day, the Palestinian position views Israel as an illegitimate entity, sooner or later doomed to disappear. The Crusader analogy only adds force to this claim.

One expression of the gap between the Israeli and the Palestinian perception is evident in the diplomatic language of both sides when they refer to the two-state solution. The Israeli version talks about “two states for two peoples,” sometime adding “a Palestinian nation-state living next to the Jewish nation-state.” The Palestinian version refers only to a “two-state solution,” never to “two states for two peoples.” It is obvious: If the Jews are not a people, they are not entitled to a state.

This is also the reason why there is no regret among the Palestinians for their rejection of the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan. As far as I know – and I would be happy if proven wrong – there has until now not been any serious Palestinian debate around their rejection of partition: There have been innumerable discussions and publications about their military defeat in 1948 in their attempt to prevent the establishment of Israel, but no Palestinian leader or thinker has openly admitted that the decision to reject the UN Partition Plan and to go to war against it had been politically or morally wrong.
To this very day, no Palestinian intellectual or politician has dared to admit that had the Palestinians accepted partition then, on May 15, 1948 a Palestinian Arab state would have been established in a part of Mandatory Palestine, and there would have been no refugees and no Nakba (“catastrophe”). It is much easier to deny moral responsibility for the terrible catastrophe the Palestinian leadership has brought upon its own people.

This is not just a matter of historical narrative: It has political implications for the here and now. If Israel is not a legitimate state based on the right to national self-determination but an imperialist entity, there is no ground for an end-of-conflict agreement based on compromise.

Most Israelis who maintain that the conflict is a territorial conflict between two national movements tend to believe that a territorial arrangement, linked in one way or another to the pre-1967 Green Line, is the way to reach an eventual resolution of the conflict. Yet the Palestinian behavior under Arafat at Camp David 2000, as well as during the negotiations between Abbas and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, suggests that something much deeper is at stake.

When Abbas insists repeatedly that his movement cannot give up the claim to the Right of Return because this is “an individual right” reserved to every Palestinian refugee and his descendants, the implication is that even if there will be an agreement on the territorial issues, and even if all West Bank settlers will be evacuated, the conflict will continue to exist and fester. This is also the reason why Abbas refuses to follow Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and address the Knesset as a symbol of reconciliation – this would imply accepting Israel’s sovereignty and legitimacy.

I am well aware that the moderate public in Israel – which acknowledges the Palestinian right to self-determination, opposes Jewish settlement in the territories and supports the two-state solution – finds it difficult to internalize the fact that the Palestinians basically do not accept Israel’s right to exist. But there is no way to deny this uncomfortable truth. Yet this should not lead to despair or the acceptance of the status quo because “there is nothing we can do.”

Fair enough. It's certainly possible that the identity could develop in such a way that it allows space for an Israeli space. It might evolve to the point where it realizes that Jews are indigenous to the Middle East and have the right to a State in the Levant. It could even continue to believe that they are colonizers, but decide that the pursuit of peace is more important than chasing out the occupiers. But at this point in time I don't see how we get from here to there. It's not bigotry - I don't think this is genetic, or essential, or required, or eternal. But I do think these are the current stakes, and when I read pro-Palestinian advocacy, this anti-colonial argument is the one I see most frequently and most prominently. So if it is an impediment to peace (and I believe it is) advocates of Palestinians who do believe that two states are the only way forward are doing Palestinians no favors by maintaining and promoting this anti-colonial narrative. xp

Cool. That is no longer what I think of as bigotry.

I agree that it would be tough to stop the anti-colonial narrative, not least of which is because Israel is often used as a scapegoat for a much broader hatred of western colonialism, so getting completely rid of it would require stopping a whole lot of bad western behaviour... But I'd still say there's some pretty clear steps that could be taken, that would lessen the idea of Israelis as colonizers, chief among them stopping the settlers from colonizing more of the West Bank...

I would guess that the majority of the Arab and muslim middle east, though to varying degrees at varying times, has always preferred a solution in which there would be no "Jewish state" of Israel. I have to admit I am fascinated by the idea of a "bi-national" state with two populations so close in number (I think Arabs in Israel and the territories combined now just slightly outnumber Jews but it's almost 50-50?). Is there any historical precedent for such a state? I am also fascinated by the concept of a muslim state with a Jewish "minority" of almost 50%.

Actually I'm not sure that it's a muslim majority given that some small percentage of Palestinians are Christian, but it would be just slightly Arab majority, I think.

Is there any historical precedent for such a state?

there's gotta be, although not one with the unique historical factors that went into the creation of Israel

likely suspects would be maybe somewhere post-colonial Africa or SE Asia...?

Slight Muslim majority if you include Gaza. Somewhat substantial Jewish majority if you do not. But it's v speculative bc trying to get an accurate demographic count of the territories is very difficult.

In this moment of crisis, both Israelis and Palestinians are experiencing intensified fear, but the fact is that the vast majority of the violence and increased repression has been directed at Palestinians. Over 45 Palestinians have been killed and over 2000 injured and hundreds detained without charge. Ten Israelis have been killed, and scores injured in individual attacks. Jewish mobs are roaming the streets of Jerusalem and elsewhere, chanting “Death to Arabs” and attacking passersby. An Eritrean asylum seeker was killed this week after being mistaken for an attacker based on racist assumptions.

What is happening today must be understood as an uprising which is the inevitable result of decades of occupation, dispossession and state violence. This resistance will only end when the Israeli government stops brutally oppressing Palestinians so that they too can live with freedom and equality. Demonizing and inciting hatred of Palestinians will only lead to more violence, suffering, and never-ending occupation and apartheid.

https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/netanyahu-shamelessly-exploits-the-shoah-to-stoke-fear-of-palestinians/

Is there any historical precedent for such a state?

Trinidad is 40% Indian, 38% African fwiw.

Fiji also close.

Oh I think Guyana is similar demographics to Trinidad, actually.

Leans a bit more towards Indian but not too far off.

Israeli friends on facebook are sharing this

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfl1/t31.0-8/11154949_10152877654874372_7327685566721725262_o.jpg

the phrase above Netanyahu is "Holocaust Denier" (Nitzul Shoah) and the phrase above the other man is "Holocaust Survivor" (Nitzol Shoah) -- it is a play on the closeness of the two words. The guy pointing is apparently a famous Israeli linguist who has had a tv show for years.

For Israelis to call the prime minister a holocaust denier is pretty strong, albeit these are my lefty friends and I don't know how widespread the reaction is.

Calling him a holocaust denier is hyperbolic and dumb. Criticize him for being inflammatory or innaccurate or for taking the heat off the nazis in order to criticize a contemporary enemy. Don't criticize him for something that isn't true.

i'd say trying to reduce the responsibility of hitler for the holocaust qualifies as a form of holocaust denial.

Holocaust deniers are antisemites generally. Don't think Netanyahu is an anti-semite. Using that term wrt him is just a way to make his statement seem taboo rather than merely offensive. It's an annoying rhetorical move

sorry you find it so annoying

this more or less aligns w/ my reading of the current situation: http://www.timesofisrael.com/losing-palestine/

what a dipshit: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/world/middleeast/netanyahu-retracts-assertion-that-palestinian-inspired-holocaust.html?_r=0

“Contrary to the impression that was created, I did not mean to claim that in his conversation with Hitler in November 1941 the Mufti convinced him to adopt the Final Solution. The Nazis decided on that by themselves.”

Cretin.

you guys are silly - the cretinism was the original claim, not the apology. i had thought that bibi probably got this claim from his father and apparently that's somewhat correct. this haaretz piece details the history of zionist historical claims re the mufti's involvement in the holocaust (which included benzion netanyahu): http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/.premium-1.682892

the cretinism was the original claim, not the apology

yes obviously

I suppose he'll have just to be a bit more careful of the impressions he creates in future.

nah

why start now?

Apparently the perpetrators of the Duma fire that killed a little boy - and from which both his parents later died - are wellknown to Israeli government, but they won't be persecuted. Were they sent to jail Guantanamo-style, or what? I can't find information about what happened to them.

there's a lot of contradictory information on this topic. i've heard that the perpetrators are known to the govt but they haven't been picked up bc they didn't want to compromise intelligence assets. i've also heard that they don't know who did it, but they know what group did it. i've read that they've put a bunch of people (including meir kahane's son or grandson or something?) in administrative detention.

JPOST 9/11/15:

While Israeli authorities are almost certain that the arsonists who set fire to a home in the Palestinian village of Duma last month are Jewish terrorists, not enough evidence has been gathered to arrest them, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said on Friday evening.

Ya'alon's office released a communique to the press seeking to clarify the government's position and update the public on the latest developments in the investigation, many of whose details are under gag order due to the sensitive nature of the case.

"There is a high probability that those responsible for the attack in Duma are part of a very extreme group of Jews that doesn't recognize the authority of the state and wishes instead to make trouble and do harm to people," the defense minister's office said.

TOI 9/10/15:

Israeli authorities know the identity of the perpetrators of July’s alleged Jewish terrorist attack which left three Palestinians dead in Duma, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon reportedly said Wednesday, but they are not being indicted at present in order to avoid exposing intel sources in court.

The defense minister told a closed meeting of about 20 young Likud party members Wednesday that the defense establishment knows who firebombed the Dawabshe home in the West Bank village of Duma, Haaretz reported Thursday.

Security officials said later that Ya’alon did not say that Israel knew the specific perpetrators, but rather the group from which they had come, Channel 2 reported

972MAG 9/7/15:

Responding to the news of Reham’s death Monday morning, a number of MKs expressed outrage and lament that authorities have not arrested a single person in connection with the deadly arson that Israeli officials are calling a terrorist attack.

Zionist Union MK Zouheir Bahloul said: ”Thirty-nine days and three family members dead and still not one arrest or even a lead about who is responsible for this inhuman and barbaric act.”

“More than a month has passed and the murderers are still free, terrorism and hate crimes against Palestinians continue to take place, and nothing has changed,” Joint List MK Aida Touma-Suleiman said. “The policy of occupation is what sprouted the Dawabsha family’s murderers and it is responsible for the death of Reham, Sa’ad and Ali.”

Israeli law enforcement and domestic intelligence authorities expanded the use of rights-violating practices such as administrative detention in response to the attack on Duma. In the days following the attack Israeli authorities placed a number of right-wing Jewish activists in administrative detention, but have not announced any arrests in direct connection to the deadly arson attack in Duma.

YAHOO 8/9/15:

Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel Sunday arrested several suspects believed to be linked to the deadly firebombing of a Palestinian home and placed two more alleged Jewish extremists in detention without trial.

The moves came as calls mounted for a crackdown in the wake of the July 31 arson attack in the West Bank village of Duma, that killed 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha and his father Saad.

NYT 10/6/15:

Palestinian leaders and advocates contrasted the swiftness of the arrests in the Henkin case with the failure, so far, to bring to justice the Jewish extremists who firebombed a home in the West Bank village of Duma on July 31, killing a Palestinian child and his parents.

Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders had branded that attack terrorism and promised to vigilantly pursue those responsible, but no arrests have been announced. Israel has imposed a gag order on the investigation.

Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, was quoted last month as saying “we have assessments of who carried out the attacks,” but would not say clearly if anyone was in custody. Three Jewish zealots suspected of being involved in a shadowy network and previous arson attacks have been held since shortly after the Duma attack under administrative detention — without formal charges.

Asked about the discrepancy in the pace of the Henkin and Duma cases, a senior Israeli security official said Monday night that the two “could not be compared.”

Evidence at the scene of the Henkin shooting and other elements led to the speedy capture of the Henkin killers, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with his agency’s regulations; the Duma arson, he said, required “a different, more complex type of work.”

my best guess? i think they probably have certain extremist groups / constellations that they believe are responsible for the arson attack but they don't really know who did it and they don't have any specific intelligence about the exact perpetrators so they've arrested people who are involved in those groups. but i don't really know. it doesn't sound like Ya'alon knows who did it and the TOI story where it says he does know but won't arrest because of intelligence considerations immediately reverses that assertion two paragraphs down.

http://i63.tinypic.com/2z4eg7p.png

I r confused

if you wanted to boycott Israel, why are you in Israel

for the story

i assume the vast majority of BDS ppl operate on the same emotional level as philly fans who take selfies at at&t stadium w/ middle fingers extended towards the field

that is a really snotty thing to say

tbf i love those philly pix

benny morris interview:
http://fathomjournal.org/there-is-a-clash-of-civilisations-an-interview-with-benny-morris/

that's an interesting interview, but the clash of civilizations idea seems very weak. having different social and politics ideas about human rights, the relationship between the individual and state etc. might make conflicts more intractable, but it is obviously not the source of the problem. lumping in kenya and southern nigeria as the west raises question marks over what his criteria are, especially when he highlights religious irredentism as a problematic part of islamism

I also don't buy the "clash of civilizations" theory and nothing he says changes my mind. I am actually often struck by how ignorant otherwise highly educated Israelis are of the muslim and arab spheres, of arabic language, etc. I had a conversation with a respected linguist who basically knew nothing about Arabic language, and I thought that was very odd.

Morris himself does not know Arabic, and you would think a historian of Palestinian refugees might want to learn it.

fair and i do think language skills are extraordinarily important in academia. however you'll notice that when he was challenging israeli orthodoxy on what happened in 48, no one was accusing him of not knowing enough arabic. gideon levy doesn't speak any arabic and he's one of the most important critics of israel in the israeli press. you'll notice that this critique tends to only go in one direction. i think morris knows enough about the history of the conflict that his opinion (that i think in many places is very well reasoned and relies on specific historical information) should be considered.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/pro-bds-student-group-builds-website-using-israeli-platform-wix/

you don't get to keep using the products of countries that you're boycotting and still consider it a boycott ffs

“Let us be clear: BDS is not abstention, nor an absolute moral principle. It is not isolation or withdrawal, and it does not entail a rejection of everything Israeli. It is not anti-Semitic, and it has nothing to do with the merits of Israeli technology. BDS is not the attempt of beautiful souls to avoid contamination with oppression and keep their own hands clean: it is a tactic within a larger strategy, and it is beginning to work,” the group posted from the Cornell statement on Facebook.

“The idea that supporters of BDS must avoid contact with anything Israeli not only misconstrues the nature of BDS, but also contorts the idea of politics in general,” SJP at Cornell wrote in its longer statement.

“Those who call us hypocritical for not adhering to a rigid logic of separation simplistically insinuate that if one believes in boycotting Israel one must do it absolutely and deprive oneself of all the innovative benefits of the ‘Start-up Nation’; since one is opposed to Israel, one must not be in contact with anything Israeli,” it added.

just embarrassingly dumb nonsense

avoid contamination

essentially it's not a boycott. it's a soft preference that when there are two equally convenient products the BDSer has a preference for not using the Israeli product. but even then not really bc I can't imagine that this website software is really the only one that would do the job.

I don't get it, Mordy, that quote seems a lot less dumb than "I oppose Israeli policy, thus everything having to do with Israel is morally contaminated and I won't touch it." People who want their universities to divest from coal companies still use tons of stuff that comes from coal, directly or indirectly. I am not a fan of BDS in any of its forms but I don't think this form is somehow particularly hypocritical or wrong.

i disagree. the entire premise of a boycott is that you don't use the service. using a piece of israeli software to design your israel boycott website would be like riding a bus to the bus boycott in montgomery. the excuse they give essentially boils down to that the boycott is not designed to make the boycotters uncomfortable.

for a boycott to work there needs to be a higher conviction than having a soft preference (that isn't even a particularly real preference as demonstrated in this example)