See-BS and Mike Wallace Patted On Back For President Ahmadinejad Interview
Thanks to Representative Press for putting this video of Mike Wallace’s CBS (See BS) 60 Minutes interview in 2006, for which he was recently and shamelessly awarded an Emmy. RP’s narration pretty much says it all in the video; also check out the transcript over the fold. See also RP’s You Tube video channel. H/T to Buntnussel.
R/T 4:41
From RP: Mike Wallace Interviewed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on 60 Minutes. At the request of the Iranian President Ahmadinejad, the FULL UNEDITED version was shown on C-SPAN.
“The cable public affairs net will air the 60 Minutes edited version, followed by the full 90-minute interview, to give viewers a window on what is left on the cutting room floor.” – John Eggerton — Broadcasting & Cable, 8/11/2006
We can see what they cut out, a call for democracy. This is another example of Mainstream Media’s continuing suppression of basic facts concerning Israel and the Palestinians and other dramatic details related to the Middle East. It is a scandal for news editors to suppress the fact that democracy is being denied to people and that U.S. policy makers are behind the injustices. It is a scandal that the mainstream media suppresses the fact that the President of Iran is calling for democracy.
The text in red was edited out of the 60 Minutes broadcast:
MR. WALLACE: You are very good at filibustering. You still have not answered the question. You still have not answered the question. Israel must be wiped off the map. Why?
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Well, don’t be hasty, sir. I’m going to get to that.
MR. WALLACE: I’m not hasty.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: I think that the Israeli government is a fabricated government and I have talked about the solution. The solution is democracy. We have said allow Palestinian people to participate in a free and fair referendum to express their views. What we are saying only serves the cause of durable peace. We want durable peace in that part of the world. A durable peace will only come about with once the views of the people are met.
So we said that allow the people of Palestine to participate in a referendum to choose their desired government, and of course, for the war to come an end as well. Why are they refusing to allow this to go ahead? Even the Palestinian administration and government which has been elected by the people is being attacked on a daily basis, and its high-ranking officials are assassinated and arrested. Yesterday, the speaker of the Palestinian parliament was arrested, elected by the people, mind you. So how long can this go on?
We believe that this problem has to be dealt with fundamentally. I believe that the American government is blindly supporting this government of occupation. It should lift its support, allow the people to participate in free and fair elections. Whatever happens let it be. We will accept and go along. The result will be as you said earlier, sir.
MR. WALLACE: Look, I mean no disrespect. Let’s make a deal. I will listen to your complete answers if you’ll stay for all of my questions. My concern is that we might run out of time.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Well, you’re free to ask me any questions you please, and I am hoping that I’m free to be able to say whatever is on my mind. You are free to put any question you want to me, and of course, please give me the right to respond fully to your questions to say what is on my mind.
Do you perhaps want me to say what you want me to say? Am I to understand —
MR. WALLACE: No.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: So if that is the case, then I ask you to please be patient.
MR. WALLACE: I said I’ll be very patient.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Maybe these are words that you don’t like to hear, Mr. Wallace.
MR. WALLACE: Why? What words do I not like to hear? [the words highlighted in red and edited out of the interview]
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Because I think that you’re getting angry.
MR. WALLACE: No, I couldn’t be happier for the privilege of sitting down with the president of Iran.
My head just exploded!
I have ranted about this travesty a few times, and now I found out that fucker got an Emmy for it? OMG
Pardon me. I have to go stick my fist through a wall. :-(
Think of it this way, 99. At least it drew attention to this travesty.
And I thought Emmy’s were for fiction, no?
No. Well, and yes… insofar as everything, even news, on tv is fiction nowadays! An Emmy is like an Oscar, only for tv instead of movies. It’s a big honor. And that smug fuck doesn’t deserve one. Neither does Pelley, who did the “honors” last time around. It was appalling! OMG!
Quite a while back, I was watching all the videos of everything I could find with Ahmadinejad in it, over and over, so I could discern for myself what the heck was up with him. I was sick of being fed what to think about him, and after reading that much-ridiculed letter to * from him, I decided I really had to try to get much closer to see. A lot of the time he is speaking on a level so far over their heads it isn’t funny. This is his weakness. Mentally, he can do rings around them, but, precisely because of that, he can’t communicate with them. He can’t break through the conditioned mentalities to be seen as someone to admire, even if he is someone to admire, because he’s on that whole other plane, but not so that he can communicate it to regular people. So, knowing this, and seeing Pelley condescending as indecently as Wallace ever did, really pissed me off. I was bellowing at my computer monitor.
I was VERY carefully listening, and watching. Backing it up when I missed something, or wanted to think about it some more. Laser attention on Ahmadinejad through several hours of interviews and translated speeches.
I don’t know how he is as a president. He isn’t even a president in our senses of the job. And we keep insisting on smearing him as if he were. I don’t know if I can even hang with the Islamic law he seems to obey, but I don’t have to, now do I? That’s Iran’s business. I just know he is so many times more courageous and grounded in the real than any of our politicians and tv pundits, maybe even TEACHERS, it isn’t funny.
He doesn’t lie.
Something some might find shocking: he doesn’t deceive.
He keeps trying to drag morons back into actuality from their completely deluded mental postures, and they are reacting as if he had a gun pointed right between their eyes. When people’s egos are threatened by someone dealing with the real, that is exactly how they react.
What do you do with them? Cede the ground? Keep letting them murder and rape and pillage? Or do you stand up to their insane amounts of power, their control of NUKES to defend all sentient beings?
The answer to that is the answer to all our problems.
And he picked it over the easy way.
Well put, 99, appreciate the follow-up. I’d wager not many people in the US or west have actually listened carefully to his words.
“The answer to that is the answer to all our problems.” — Indeed!
To say that Ahmedinijad never called for Israel to be wiped off the map is one thing, but to say that he speaks nothing but truth? The man denies the Holocaust, or at least claims the death toll is exaggerated by a few million, and also denies the existence of Iranian homosexuals (of course there aren’t any, since they get hanged once they’re outed).
There is no courage in repeating the mantras long prevailant in the muslim world regarding Israel and the Jews. Like the saying that pornography is a matter of geography, so is courage. For instance, supporting a one-state solution may be a bold thing to do in the West (even if I think the idea is a horrible one), but it is the maintream view in the Arab and Muslim world. In Iran, it takes more guts to support two states than to support the one-state solution.
From what I’ve read, Iranians have grown to hate Ahmedinijad. His policies in the areas where he actually does have control have been disastrous. So, 99, you can like the guy exactly because you don’t have to live in Iran and suffer from his failures.
The man questions why we treat the Holocaust unquestioningly, which is a healthy thing. Throwing people such as Ernest Zundel in jail for practising historical scholarship that casts doubt on any orthodoxy is a violation of freedom of speech and freedom of historical inquiry, which is not healthy for Jews or anyone else. Do we throw “climate change deniers” in jail? Well, not yet. And a substantial number of New Yorkers and Americans don’t believe the conspiracy theory of 9/11 either — the one propagated by the Bush regime. Scholarship should be scrutinised and can stand up or fall on its own merit. Jailing and muzzling people for expressing dissent (not incitement) is dangerous.
One of the world’s foremost scholars on the Shoah, the late Raul Hilberg, cites a figure of 5.1 million — is he a shoah denier-revisionist too? The difference of almost a million is quite significant, I’d say, and there are other estimates. There are arguably political reasons the oft-cited, magic 6 million number is repeated, and this estimate should be open to scrutiny like all scholarship, in the service of history not repeating itself. As quoted in the linked article by Norman Finkelstein, Hilberg recently said that ‘whereas the Nazi holocaust is an irrefutable fact this was “more easily said than demonstrated”‘ and ‘”Hilberg even declared that Holocaust deniers served the useful purpose of posing questions that everyone else assumed were already answered.’
Some Iranians may dislike President Ahmadinejad but they’d fiercely defend his nationalist credentials and his honesty. He lives by his own code truthfully, and 99 does not need to subscribe to his Islamist code to admire his fidelity to it, as she clearly stated. His political policies are another question, and your blanket assessment of “failed” needs qualification, too. Are they all “failed”? Which ones? What is your measure of success?
There is so much evidence and so much documentation regarding the Holocaust that it is quite odd to say that we treat it unquestioningly. Holocaust research isn’t just philosophical musings – it’s based on data. It’s free for anybody to research, but for it to be real research it needs to be based on facts and not on prejudice.
There is no exact estimate of how many Jews died. Could it be 5 million? Maybe, but that’s a far cry from the claim of many Holocaust deniers that no more than a few tens of thousands died.
I’m not an expert on Iranian politics, so I don’t know how Ahmedinijad is doing on all fronts, but I understand the economy is not doing that great. Also, I’ve read that not only the public, but even the Ayatollahs, are unhappy with his belligerent rhetoric towards the West.
By the way, what do you think happened on 9/11? You don’t believe it was Al-Qaeda?
I agree with Hilberg — as with any historical scholarship, there are always new things being brought to light including hitherto suppressed information and evidence. Most people are not Holocaust specialists and do in fact accept things unquestioningly, relying more on the Hollywood version of history (and Shoah movies abound, and tower over any other deserving historical genocide such as the Congo, American Indians and the Holodomor).
The Iranian economy would be doing far better without the belligerent efforts of the likudniks in the US and Israel who are arguing for and enacting economic sanctions and a blockade instead of talking to Iran. I also disagree that President Ahmadinejad has employed especially belligerent rhetoric toward the West. That’s also quite rich to make that claim since it has been your government that has been so bellicose toward Iran, a country that has not invaded another in at least 200 years.
My thinking about 9/11 is less important than advocating the scrutiny of the obvious holes and cover-ups in the official story that bear serious investigation. Skeptics tend to be in either the “let it happen” or “made in happen” camps, and their number might surprise you.
I found the original interview with Raul Hilberg, and from the context it is clear that he didn’t mean that the Holocaust or its scope is not proven, but that presenting all the facts – all the documentation, all the historical sites, pictures, footage, personal stories etc., even though they’re all there, it still isn’t easy, probably because it would take a very long talk to piece everything together to show the scope of the events.
Also, you’re presenting Hilberg as someone who was open to debate and scholarly exchange with the so-called Holocaust revisionists. In the interview, he says he doesn’t engage with Holocaust deniers/revisionists. Just because he’s against sending them to jail, doesn’t mean he supports accepting them as serious scholars.
Israel and Iran have both been belligerent towards each other. We’ll never agree on who started it. The economic sanctions are the result of Iran not willing to talk with the West (just recently they rejected Western incentives for dropping their nuclear program).
By the way, Israel has never attacked Iran, but Iran has attacked us via its Lebanese proxy.
Hezbollah has attacked Israel? Well, it comes down to your definition of attack if you regard that July border incident of soldiers being captured and we’ve already discussed that. And Hezbollah is its own organisation, it does not blindly follow its Iranian supporters any more than the Israelis always follow the US government.
You are quite wrong about sanctions being the result of “Iran not willing to talk with the West”. And let’s be specific about the amorphous “West”. Is Russia in “the West”? Iran has offered talks on a number of occasions, and has gone a step further and offered collaboration and nuclear project joint ventures. Iran is well within its internationally recognised rights to develop a nuclear program, and there is no reason to expect it to cower in to the bullying of a few regimes, especially Israel, who has neither joined the NPT nor allowed nuclear inspectors in to see its own covertly developed nuclear weapons program, for which dissidents have been jailed and continue to be placed under house arrest.
You write: “you’re presenting Hilberg as someone who was open to debate and scholarly exchange with the so-called Holocaust revisionists.” I presented no such thing. I quoted Finkelstein about Hilberg’s opinion about holocaust revisionists presenting questions, I didn’t at all say he was willing to debate and exchange with them. The interview you cite is an entirely different one to the one I cite, so I do not know what you mean by “original”.
Pardon me if I’m missing what’s being said back and forth here, but I can only skim it to keep my head from exploding.
It’s immaterial to present day problems if zero or ten million Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust. The Holocaust is invoked ad nauseam as some sort of excuse for Israel’s vicious mistreatment of Palestinians and Lebanese and Syrians and Iranians, anybody. I think that’s the point Ahmadinejad is trying to get through to us, and it is PRISTINE.
I’ve read where he was, once again, mis-taken on the gays thing, and it happens so often that I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t on purpose. It was something to the effect of gays not being a problem for Iran, not that Iran has no gays.
The whole thing is ENTIRELY fucked up because even if Iran is trying to get a nuclear bomb, THEY AREN’T GOING TO USE IT. That would be suicide. Pure and simple. It also would help protect them against Israeli aggression, and NOBODY can tell me that’s not a REAL threat everywhere in the Middle East.
Whoever you are, step back and look objectively. I don’t care if you love Israel so much you’d die for her, the FACT is: Israel has been the bad actor since its inception. Maybe the Holocaust was fresh enough in 1948 that they were right to be this kind of fierce in conflicts, but it’s been indisputably wrong since 1967, and yet the miserable fucks keep disputing it… because of Jews’ victimization in WWII. Bullshit. No excuses. Stop whining, AND STOP KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE BECAUSE YOU WANT TO KEEP WHINING AND YOU WANT THEIR PROPERTY AND RESOURCES!
Fuck. I can’t keep up saying the stuff I want to say because my head just exploded again.
Sorry.
Right on, 99, Iran’s legitimate nuclear program threatens Israel only because it challenges the neighborhood bully in its regional hegemony and nuclear monopoly.
With regard to how the Shoah has been cynically exploited and manipulated, also agreed.
Btw, a recent news item reveals how French comedian Dieudonné, who called the saturation levels of its exploitation ‘remembrance porn’, has recently been convicted of “public defamation”. The truth is apparently too close to the bone. He is a comedian, for heaven’s sake. This heavy handed censorship and criminalization of humor and dissent is pathetic.
See:
Comedian found guilty of blasphemy
The New Yorker finds a comedian to hate
Ann: the interview I cited is the one from which Finkelstein took the “easier said than demonstrated” quote.
Regarding nuclear “dissidents” in Israel, there is only one – Mordechai Vaanunu, and he was jailed for revealing military secrets. It isn’t a case of free speech. The guy is a spy, except for the fact that he gave his information to a newspaper and not directly to enemy governments.
Several countries, and not just the United States and Israel, are worried about Iran’s nuclear intentions. What Iran has agreed to so far hasn’t eased their worries because it isn’t transparent enough and doesn’t guarantee that Iran won’t make nukes.
Israel is scared shitless about an Iranian nuke. We’re not sure at all that they wouldn’t use it against us. Also, a nuclear Iran would change the balance of power towards the radicals who will never be willing to accept Israel’s existence. A nuclear Iran would make the two-state solution harder to reach, since Hamas and Islamic Jihad will feel more emboldened than ever.
99: Ahmedinijad has questioned what really happened in the Holocaust. He hasn’t just called for an inquiry into how the events of the Holocaust have been misused.
Israelis have misused the Holocaust many times, but the Pro-Palestinians (for a lack of a better term) have also exaggerated the misuse of it. When Israel operates in Gaza or the West Bank, it doesn’t say it is doing so because the Holocaust gave them a right to do it. If anything, the Shoah is misused much more often with regard to Israeli-European relations than when Israel deals with the Palestinians or Arab countries.
Finkelstein does not appear to mention the Logos interview nor does the phrase “easier said than demonstrated” appear in it. How did you form the impression it was the original?
I still don’t see how questioning what happened in the Holocaust is a sacrilege, sorry. If people want to claim “only” tens of thousands of people died, let them prove it with rigorous scholarship, not be thrown in jail. And 99’s point was that the number is secondary to how it has been used and abused.
The Israeli leadership is not at all scared shitless about Iran using nukes against Israel, if you and/ or other Israelis sincerely believe that you have bought in to the fearmongering. Are you that credulous or simply parroting the same rationale Israeli officialdom give for hasbara purposes?
As 99 has pointed out, using nukes assures it own destruction, we are invoking the most elementary nuclear deterrence principle here so I am not impressed by this claim at all. I’m not convinced all or even the majority of Israeli citizens have been so duped. Even Ex-Mossad Director Efraim Halevy has said repeatedly now in various readily available interviews and lectures that Iran poses no existential threat to Israel even with a nuclear program.
It is Israel who has made the two state solution hard to reach with its bantustan creation and Israeli-Jew only roads and continued land theft of construction of illegal settlements, not any other party. Countries rightly do not accept Israel’s existence as it stands because it continues to build illegal settlements, flout international law, blockades the Gaza Ghetto, practises apartheid, steals fertile soil and water and refuses to define its borders. Just for starters.
You call Vanunu a “spy”, not many outside of Israel would agree with you. It certainly would be the first time I have heard of a spy being labeled as such for talking to the media rather than other countries’ governments. I prefer to call him what he is: a whistleblower.
Finkelstein does not appear to mention the Logos interview nor does the phrase “easier said than demonstrated” appear in it. How did you form the impression it was the original?
You quoted it yourself in your first reply to me on this post:
As quoted in the linked article by Norman Finkelstein, Hilberg recently said that ‘whereas the Nazi holocaust is an irrefutable fact this was “more easily said than demonstrated”‘ and ‘”Hilberg even declared that Holocaust deniers served the useful purpose of posing questions that everyone else assumed were already answered.’
The problem with the Holocaust deniers is that they don’t have any evidence on their side yet they keep presenting their unsubstantiated claims. Also, most Holocaust deniers aren’t truly interested in what happened. Anti-Semitism is usually the driving force behind them.
Regarding the Iranian nuke, the shift in the balance of power is Israel’s main concern. Being nuked is very unlikely, but we can’t discount the possibility completely.
Israel has been no saint, but reality is much more complicated than to put all the blame on Israel alone. I’m against the settlements and land confiscations. Having said that, even if Israel got out of the West Bank and Gaza at this point in time, I don’t see how peace is possible, when Iran-backed Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah do not accept Israel’s existence, and even Fatah moderates want refugees to return into Israel proper.
Thank you, I see that the Logos article has the following:
“but the essence of my talk was that, yes, there was a Holocaust, which is, by the way, more easily said than demonstrated.”
although Finkelstein does not explicitly say this was the piece to which he was referring, we can reasonably assume it was so.
A shift in the balance of power would be welcome for many of us. Israel has used brute force to eliminate other country’s nascent nuclear capabilities in the region in the past (Iraq, possibly Syria) and that is unacceptable. It is a bullying garrison state and its position is untenable.
Nobody can ever discount the nuclear threat or possibility of nuclear attack, it still not justify Israel’s baseless propagations. There is evidence that Israel used uranium in its weaponry against Lebanon — its Israel we should be worried about.
Regarding your last statement, we’ve been through our positions on this previously. Your reasoning is speculative in your “even if” and “Israel proper” has not even been defined nor internationally recognised. The right of return of Palestinian refugees to their land is an internationally recognised right enshrined in international law. It is Israel that refuses to recognise the Palestinians’ existence in deed, not simply rhetoric, and that prevents a two state solution from being enacted.
“A shift in the balance of power would be welcome for many of us.
I don’t see how a shift towards Islamic radicalism is good for anyone. We need moderates who believe in dialogue in both Israel and the Arab and Muslim world.
Whether the right of return is part of international law is quite questionable. I’m no legal expert so I won’t go into it. This may be the issue that, in the end, once everything else is resolved, prevent peace from happening.
Hamas has already offered numerous ceasefires as well as talks, it is your government that keeps coming up with the excuse that it can not talk/ negotiate/ accept Hamas. It (the Israeli government) has also rejected (or at least not accepted) the sterling opportunity presented by the Saudi Peace Plan, offering diplomatic recognition from all Arab states and that was agreed to by Hamas.
No, there is no question, the right of return is enshrined in international law, namely general international human rights law, in particular the 1966 Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is also enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and finds support in international precedent. Resolution 194 of the UN General Assembly (1948) “resolves that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return…” As this brief summarises (recommended), the RoR is anchored in “four separate bodies of international law: the law of nationality, as applied upon state succession; humanitarian law; human rights law; and refugee law (a subset of human rights law which also incorporates humanitarian law).”
You can of course, find some articles on the web, mainly of Jewish and/ or Israeli provenance, that claim that the basis in international law is shaky in an attempt to cast doubt on the Right of Return.
I certainly disagree with your last sentence. I’ll have to leave it there, being time-pressed.
Hamas has already offered numerous ceasefires as well as talks, it is your government that keeps coming up with the excuse that it can not talk/ negotiate/ accept Hamas.
Let me remind you that there is currently a ceasefire in effect, reached through negotiations with Hamas. The problem is that Hamas isn’t willing to hold talks on anything more than a temporary ceasefire and has repeatedly said it will never recognize the State of Israel.
It (the Israeli government) has also rejected (or at least not accepted) the sterling opportunity presented by the Saudi Peace Plan, offering diplomatic recognition from all Arab states and that was agreed to by Hamas.
I agree that Israel hasn’t done enough to move the Saudi peace plan forward. At first it rejected it, then at some point Olmert said he sees it favorably but didn’t really do anything with it. There was an opportunity to get things started at the Annapolis Conference last year, when members of the Arab League also attended. I don’t really understand why the conference wasn’t used for that purpose and I have no idea if any of the parties, including Israel, ever brought it up.
Things aren’t as clear cut as you present them regarding the right of return, but since neither of us is an expert in international law lets not try to go there.
I am aware of the “ceasefire” in effect, albeit with a number of violations, mostly from the Israeli side. Hamas has not been offered anything of value to in turn offer recognition, it was repudiated right from the start when the Israeli government refused to recognised it and then subject to an ongoing inhumane economic blockade. I wouldn’t “recognise” the legitimacy of my cruel jailer to continue to jail me, either.
One does not at all need to be an expert in international law on the right of return issue. The legal experts can delve into the minutiae, there is however no question that the Right of Return is supported in international law and I will not accept the skirting of the issue such as what occurs on what the Israeli side deems “final status negotiations”. Its a fundamental right and we have already gone there previously. It is a central pillar of the resolution of this conflict, not a peripheral issue.
The right of return is highly questionable, and the experts who support it are no less prejudiced than the ones who object to it.
For argument’s sake, let’s say it is indeed part of international law. This would be a case where adhering to international law completely would be Israeli suicide. Refugees can’t return to Israel. They can return to the Palestinian state and be paid reparations. No more than that. When Israelis see the Palestinians and countries like Lebanon, where every political party has a militia, they have no incentive to agree to the full repatriation of Palestinians.
If Hamas recognizes Israel, or at least stops declaring that Islam calls for the destruction of Israel it would stand to gain a Palestinian state. The “jailer” would stop jailing Gaza if they showed some willingness to stop fighting Israel.
The right of return is highly questionable, and the experts who support it are no less prejudiced than the ones who object to it.
Another false equivalence — they are not as “prejudiced” as each other at all. One simply seeks to cast doubt on clearly stipulated international law and cloud the issue, is all. We’ve seen Israeli hasbara at it many times. The prevailing realpolitik may not respect international law but international law it is. The Israeli regime knows all about violating international law, it has been the worst rogue state in the world in its relatively short history.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard that melodramatic fatuous phrase “Israeli suicide” I’d be decidedly richer. Let me paint a picture for you. The Israeli state as currently conceived is already on life support. It can choose to continue to be a thiefing vulture (the vulture was recently considered as Israel’s national bird), or it can be a phoenix and transform itself into a more sustainable and peaceful entity.
At the very least, it could stop actively preventing the creation of a Palestinian state. That is at the heart of the matter. The Israeli status quo reveals no indications it would accept a Palestinian state, the problem is if you still believe they do. Many Israelis of good will might, some MKs might, but it ain’t gonna happen anytime soon. The powers that be do not want an independent Palestinian state. They don’t even want a two state solution. Why are the illegal settlements continuing to be built?
There is no Palestinian state to return to because of Israeli intransigence and the Israeli regime has repeatedly spurned peace. Hamas recognition is a spurious precondition, as previously discussed, repeatedly. No, it does not follow that it would stand to gain a state from this meaningless gesture. Gazans have every right to resist and fight the theft and military occupation Israel continues to impose.
As for the next absurd statement:
“The “jailer” would stop jailing Gaza if they showed some willingness to stop fighting Israel.”
— let’s put it a parallel context shall we:
The “jailer” would stop jailing Jews if they showed some willingness to stop fighting Nazi Germany.
In both cases, they have every right to resist submission to theft, appropriation and state terror. You may advocate acquiescing to one’s rapist and their repeated assaults, but not all of us do. And that metaphor of rape is every bit as apt.
As for this disingenuous statement:
“When Israelis see the Palestinians and countries like Lebanon, where every political party has a militia, they have no incentive to agree to the full repatriation of Palestinians.”
What possible relevance do Lebanese political party militia have with Palestinians there and to the Right of Return? The nearly half a million Palestinian refugees are there only because of Israeli ethnic cleansing and driving them off their land. Second, a large reason for some Lebanese militias forming are the various Israeli invasions (Hezbollah) and divide and rule tactics (South Lebanese Army, Christian militias). What’s the connection?
The Palestinians are entitled to their legal right to return and restitution should they so choose, or to compensation in lieu. Some will return, many will not. But its their right.
Another false equivalence — they are not as “prejudiced” as each other at all
If they agree with you they’re right, if they oppose you they’re just lying. How comfortable.
The Israeli regime knows all about violating international law, it has been the worst rogue state in the world in its relatively short history.
The worst rogue state? Worse than China, Russia (and before that, the USSR), North Korea and all kinds of African nations? Okay, these aren’t the kinds of countries I’d like Israel to be grouped with, but it just shows that you are exaggerating. Yes, Israel has broken international law many times and it should not. It is far from being the worst violator, though – it’s more like the most condemned violator.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard that melodramatic fatuous phrase “Israeli suicide” I’d be decidedly richer. Let me paint a picture for you. The Israeli state as currently conceived is already on life support.
Saying that the one state solution is the cure for Israel’s ills is like saying that the Ebola virus is the cure for a treatable form of leukemia. The two state solution is the best cure, but it isn’t that simple to achieve and it isn’t only up to Israel.
There is no Palestinian state to return to because of Israeli intransigence and the Israeli regime has repeatedly spurned peace.
Have the Palestinians done nothing to damage their own prospects for a Palestinian state? Israel certainly shares the blame for the current situation. Continued settlement activity is wrong. I think the settlements should be evacuated. However, Palestinian independence cannot become a reality as long as the Palestinians refuse to promise they’ll stop fighting Israel. Both sides still need to go through quite a long psychological process, and not just a political one, in order for peace to be achieved.
The “jailer” would stop jailing Jews if they showed some willingness to stop fighting Nazi Germany.
The Jews didn’t want to destroy Germany. They were jailed just for being Jews. The Nazis wanted to exterminate what they saw as subhumans. These weren’t two groups in conflict with each other. The situation in Gaza is very different. Hamas is the one who wants to destroy Israel. We don’t want to destroy the Palestinians (though we would be happy to destroy Hamas, something we know is impossible).
What possible relevance do Lebanese political party militia have with Palestinians there and to the Right of Return? […] What’s the connection?
The connection is that Lebanon is the most democratic Arab country. Though Israel did aide a couple of militias, most of them have nothing to do with Israel. I’m referring to Lebanese militias, not the Palestinian militias in Lebanon. The Palestinians in the West Bank also have a million and one different militias. How can we know that Palestinians returning to Israel won’t create militias to get back at those who were responsible for their decades of misery?
Israel, despite its many ills, is a great country for its citizens. For most people, life here is good, though filled with anxiety. The way to remove the anxiety is through a peaceful two-state solution.
We’re not going to destroy everything we’ve built here. Millions of Palestinians coming here would be a great injustice to the Israelis. Most Israelis, even the 20% of Arab Israelis, will probably be worse off. Are Israelis’ concerns completely illegitimate?
If they agree with you they’re right, if they oppose you they’re just lying. How comfortable.
No, and that’s a rather feeble attempt to conflate me with a considerable body of international law that enshrines the RoR. That’s what they oppose, I have nothing to do with it. I didn’t formulate international law, I merely point to it and wish it to be respected as any civilised state that purports to be a democracy would. Nor am I accusing them of “lying” per se, simply clouding (that is obfuscating) the issue for political purposes by implying that its not as clear cut and attempting to create more ambiguity and wriggle-room.
(Ann) The Israeli regime knows all about violating international law, it has been the worst rogue state in the world in its relatively short history.
On the measure of the number of UN resolutions it has flouted, which exceeds that of all other states in its short history since 1948, yes. There are other grievous measures that are important, granted, but this is the one I had in mind when I called it a ‘rogue’ state in the context of international law.
Saying that the one state solution is the cure for Israel’s ills is like saying that the Ebola virus is the cure for a treatable form of leukemia. The two state solution is the best cure, but it isn’t that simple to achieve and it isn’t only up to Israel.
It isn’t simple to achieve to a large degree because of illegal Israeli settlements which continue to be built. Yes, that big, blaring obstacle of illegal settlements and an illegal barrier which is creating bantustans is only up to Israel. Is someone forcing it to continue to flout law, steal land and continue to build them?
Have the Palestinians done nothing to damage their own prospects for a Palestinian state? Israel certainly shares the blame for the current situation. Continued settlement activity is wrong. I think the settlements should be evacuated. However, Palestinian independence cannot become a reality as long as the Palestinians refuse to promise they’ll stop fighting Israel. Both sides still need to go through quite a long psychological process, and not just a political one, in order for peace to be achieved.
Conversely, you might tell me what the Palestinians have in fact done to prevent their state from happening? What of the spurious conditions — that aren’t adhered to by Israel either (recognition, renunciation of violence etc) — would have created a state? They haven’t been submissive enough? We’ve already mentioned one of the major obstacles and reasons a Palestinian state hasn’t happened. Have the Palestinians been somehow responsible for further illegal Israeli settlements and loss of their land? Its fine to blithely state that “continued settlements activity is wrong” but you haven’t drawn it out fully in my view: its wrong and it is one of the major obstacles to peace and two states for which Israel and Israel alone is to blame.
On your suggestion that both sides need to go through a long psychological process, I agree.
The Jews didn’t want to destroy Germany. They were jailed just for being Jews. The Nazis wanted to exterminate what they saw as subhumans. These weren’t two groups in conflict with each other. The situation in Gaza is very different. Hamas is the one who wants to destroy Israel. We don’t want to destroy the Palestinians (though we would be happy to destroy Hamas, something we know is impossible).
While all the Jews didn’t want to destroy Germany (neither do all the Palestinians want to destroy Israel, they simply want justice and an end to the occupation), some Germans believed they did, particularly after the conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, and this perception is what drove the fear. For some it was about two groups in conflict. eg Jewish bankers vs German workers. Note that I am not endorsing this perception, merely pointing to it. And there are in fact also thousands of Palestinians who are in Israeli jails just for being Palestinian, by the way, and for whom there is no charge (and no trial).
Hamas rightly refuses to accept occupation of their land and the inhumane siege by Israel and do not accept Israel as it is currently presented. They have accepted a peace plan which would see all Arab states offer peace based on 1967 borders, so how can they be said to still want to destroy Israel outright? The full force of the Arab states and Arab League is behind this initiative. Neither Israel nor Hamas can destroy the other outright, never mind what either has said in careless political rhetoric in the past.
Moreover, the people of Gaza support Hamas in the main, and you can’t destroy a whole people, though the Israeli regime seem to be trying their darndest with a disgusting siege and blockade that breaks another major tenet of law and morality: that on collective punishment.
The connection is that Lebanon is the most democratic Arab country. Though Israel did aide a couple of militias, most of them have nothing to do with Israel. I’m referring to Lebanese militias, not the Palestinian militias in Lebanon. The Palestinians in the West Bank also have a million and one different militias. How can we know that Palestinians returning to Israel won’t create militias to get back at those who were responsible for their decades of misery?
Well now there’s an exaggeration for you: “a million and one militias”. I’m still unclear about what you think Lebanese militias have to do with the Palestinan RoR. Are you suggesting that Arabs are somehow prone to forming militias?
As for the question: how can we know the Palestinians who choose to return to their land won’t create militias? Because they have got what they wanted: restitution and justice. That means more than anything to them. You should sit down with elderly Palestinians driven out of their homes in 1948 who cite their most fervent desire before they die would be to simply have a pinch of soil from their area, let alone to spend time there.
And most people are just that: ordinary people, not armed militants. A minority of them exist in response to the military occupation of their land and deprivation of their basic human rights. They are militants by circumstances, the circumstances Israel created. Palestinians want justice, not revenge even after justice is served. Restitution would evaporate their grievances.
I would also advise, as was highly successful in South Africa, something akin to truth in reconciliation to help transform the grief and the grievances and fear and move on. You rightly noted it will be a long psychological process. Best to start asap and not continue another minute with those “decades of misery”, then. Atoning for the past for the purposes of peaceful coexistence is within reach once the occupation ends.
Israel, despite its many ills, is a great country for its citizens. For most people, life here is good, though filled with anxiety. The way to remove the anxiety is through a peaceful two-state solution.
We’re not going to destroy everything we’ve built here. Millions of Palestinians coming here would be a great injustice to the Israelis. Most Israelis, even the 20% of Arab Israelis, will probably be worse off. Are Israelis’ concerns completely illegitimate?
No, Israelis’ concerns are not all completely illegitimate, so why are the Palestinians dismissed as such? There are ways for both to be accommodated fairly. Why does Israel prevent a two state solution from happening? I am not against it, in fact I have been for it, but Israel’s actions are making two states impossible: why?
Let’s not exaggerate the number: it would not be “millions of Palestinians” returning. Would it be so onerous if it were a quarter of a million? 10 000? A single suburb is about 40 000 people.
Yes, I’m sure the material standard of living is quite good and that life is great for Ashkenazim most of all, though Israel does not fulfill one of its raison d’etres, it is the least safe place for Jews in the world. More people each year are emigrating going by the numbers. The fastest growing Jewish populations in the world happen to be in Germany, not Israel.
Who is asking that everything be destroyed? The requirements for a just peace are most reasonable. Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to them as contained in the Saudi Plan: broadly- a return to 1967 borders and dismantle the illegal settlements, east Jerusalem will be the capital of a Palestinian state. Granted, dismantling the illegal WB settlements won’t be easy, but the alternative is far, far worse. And Israel should not have built them, why is it creating more problems that will only make it harder? It always returns to this.
The longer Israel leaves meaningful resolution, the harder for Israel it will be.
The longer Zionists continue buying support and smothering irrefutable facts with sophistry, the harder for everybody it will be. The only comfort to be had from this knowledge is cold. The perpetrators will be reviled to the end of time.
I want to avoid cold comfort, in favor of real justice, whenever remotely possible.
I think the only way to meet this manipulation is with crisp, vivid reminders of actuality. Long, point by point arguments might advance scholarship, but lives need saving. You jump out of the system, leap to the level where fundamental reality stays visible and make statements from there.
Making excuses, talking around the edges, spewing straw men, appealing to self-interest, making criminality an intellectual exercise, muddling the facts, distracting from the real, all the ploys of those wishing us to see some basic morality in the unremitting oppression of a whole population, are the acts of conspirators, murderers.
It is not polite.
Stopping genocide is not polite.
It isn’t simple to achieve to a large degree because of illegal Israeli settlements which continue to be built.
[…]
its wrong and it is one of the major obstacles to peace and two states for which Israel and Israel alone is to blame.
I totally agree. The settlements are Israel’s fault alone and they’re a major obstacle to peace, though far from being the only one. Israel shoots itself in the foot whenever it builds new houses in the West Bank. But even the settlements, once Israeli politicians come to their senses, can be dealt with. The settlers can be removed. The approach I’d take would be to just tell them to leave by a certain date, and if they don’t comply they will not be compensated for their houses and they’ll live under the Palestinian government. Once they hear that, most of them will leave.
Conversely, you might tell me what the Palestinians have in fact done to prevent their state from happening?
For one thing, whenever negotiations don’t go the way they’d like they turn to violence rather than to more negotitations. Aslo, all throughout negotiation periods during the Oslo years and the 2000s, terrorist groups that were against even talking to Israel kept carrying out attacks in Israel and the Palestinian Authority didn’t do much to stop them.
And there are in fact also thousands of Palestinians who are in Israeli jails just for being Palestinian, by the way, and for whom there is no charge (and no trial).
You’re referring to Palestinians who are under administrative detention. This is a problematic practice, but it is important to note that they aren’t held just for being Palestinian but because there is reason to think these individuals are security threats and there is some kind of judicial oversight. I believe administrative detentions should be drastically modified so authorities will have to present much more evidence to justify a detention.
They have accepted a peace plan which would see all Arab states offer peace based on 1967 borders, so how can they be said to still want to destroy Israel outright?
From my online search it seems it isn’t that clear that Hamas has accepted the Saudi peace plan. Back in 2002, a Hamas spokesman, Ismail Abu Shanab, said Hamas would accept the plan. Since then, higher ranking Hamas leaders have not confirmed Shanab’s statement. Besides, if Israel negotiates with the Arab League and Fatah and ends up with an agreement where refugees are compensated rather than repatriated, I highly doubt Hamas would accept it.
Are you suggesting that Arabs are somehow prone to forming militias?
I’m saying that most Palestinian refugees have lived in these undemocratic countries. They are more familiar with societies where politics is conducted through the barrel of a gun than they’re familiar with democracies. Just like Bush can’t democratize Arab countries by force, the refugees can’t be democratized by relocating them into Israel.
Let’s not exaggerate the number: it would not be “millions of Palestinians” returning. Would it be so onerous if it were a quarter of a million? 10 000? A single suburb is about 40 000 people.
Since most Palestinians in Arab countries, including the West Bank and Gaza, live under horrible conditions, it would not be far fetched to assume that at least a million refugees would want to return. That is unacceptable.
Who is asking that everything be destroyed?
Well, we Israelis see the right of return as something that would destroy our country. This isn’t just some claim to avoid the return of Palestinians. We truly, honestly believe this.
As for the question: how can we know the Palestinians who choose to return to their land won’t create militias? Because they have got what they wanted: restitution and justice.
That’s quite a utopian scenario. The Palestinians will come to Israel and everything will be just wonderful. Immigration under normal circumstances is difficult. Here it would be even harder. Returning to the place they’ve dreamed of for decades and seeing it is not the same as in their fantasies can be quite a shock. Their old homes are no longer there, the culture is completely different. Disgruntled refugees, unhappy with reality, may form militias in order to reclaim the country for themselives as they envision it should be and in order to take vengeance upon the Jews who not only made them refugees for 60 years, but changed Israel so much that they still feel like refugees after returning to it.
99: Enough with the lie about genocide already! Israel is not trying to kill off the Palestinians.
This is not a scholarly debate for me. I’m an Israeli. This is my life.
I don’t think it needs to be your stated intention to kill them off. If you are killing them off, and you are, it’s genocide. It doesn’t matter what your reasoning is! It’s murder. You are defending it. You are actively helping to PERPETRATE it. It’s genocide. No matter what you don’t CALL it. I’d be violent too if you were doing it to me.
Quit with your head trips! I know you were born into them, that you’ve been conditioned your whole life to slide around the ugliness in defense of your existence where you exist, but cut it out! You’re making me sick!
Wouldn’t you rather work this hard for the redemption your country’s evil? If it’s your LIFE, you need to be working this hard to save others’ lives, not excusing, colluding with, their murder.
Maybe this will go a bajillionth of an inch toward helping….
‘Once Israeli politicians come to their senses?’ Its a rather large collective psychosis Israel lives in, when on earth will that be? The law is clear, the morality is clear, you have the force of arms to enforce it, there’s absolutely nothing that justifies the continued building of further illegal settlements and the non-evacuation of post-1967 settlements. Is Israel held hostage to the extremist racist settlers? If so, what does that say about its claims of secularity, let alone democracy?
99 is spot on. It IS genocide, as John Pilger and Ilan Pappe and others have observed.
I think you are way off on your causal analysis re perceived Palestinian violence and attacks going on during negotiations. You seem to completely ignore the worsening of conditions (roadblocks, blockades, targeted assassinations, incursions) caused by Israel during negotiations. Things dramatically worsened during Annapolis. You make it sound as if Palestinians are petulant and prone to violence when the stacked cards against them in negotiations actually portend inconceivably worse rather than better conditions. You should read some of the Palestinian literature about and around the intifadas. The resilience, restraint and spirit of the Palestinians is actually nothing short of inspiring.
Your comments on administrative detention: the catch-all ‘security’ justification is, I’m sure, conveniently used by any tyrannical regime. All of what Israel is doing against Palestinians is because they are Palestinians “in the way”. There is no evidence many of them are a security threat, and suspicion of security threat is not enough. Israel is an apartheid, not a democratic regime. It explicitly defines itself on an ethno-religious-nationalist-messianic ideology. It treats one fifth of its citizen very differently, with institutionalised discriminatory laws. It oppresses and imprisons a whole people under its jurisdiction, practising slow-mo genocide against Gazans.
There is no such thing as an unalloyed democracy, it comes in degrees. The USA (and UK) is currently less of a democracy than some of the Nordic countries. Just because a country calls itself a democracy doesn’t make it one. The Arab states have strong democratic movements and some tyrannical leaderships propped up by the US (not unlike Israel, really). Please spare me the chauvinism about Arab states not being avowed democracies.
As for possible militias forming, I doubt this will happen as a result of returning refugees simply by seeing that things have changed. That’s quite a leap. Culture shock is one thing, taking up arms quite another. Israel is one of the most militarised societies in the world, so its a bit rich to point to other neighboring states that may have militias (again, the most significant of them arising as a direct result of or response to Israel as previously mentioned). Moreover, the returning refugees do have connections to their Arab culture with one fifth of Israel’s citizens. Why would we assume it would be significantly different for the returning refugees than it would be for Arab Israeli citizens?
Lastly, your statement:
Since most Palestinians in Arab countries, including the West Bank and Gaza, live under horrible conditions, it would not be far fetched to assume that at least a million refugees would want to return.
Do you never ask yourself why these people live in “horrible conditions”, at least in Gaza and the West Bank? Will you not recognise Israeli culpability? You assume good intentions that do not jibe with Israel’s stated intentions or more importantly its actions on the settlements or on the fate of Palestinians. Israel thwarts economic development in the OPT in every way. It steals Palestinian tax credits, steals water, land, prevents people from returning who want to develop the OPT (eg develop Sam Bahour). Palestinians can do very well for themselves, thank you very much, they just want the Israeli noose around them gone. They’ll get along just fine. As for the conditions elsewhere in the region, I hardly think you can make that blanket statement. The conditions vary across the board. A Palestinian living in their own house in Lebanon or Bahrain or Jordan may have better conditions than those living in one of the camps, for example.
99:
If you are killing them off, and you are, it’s genocide.
Do too many non-combatant civilians get killed? Yes. Should it stop? Absolutely. Is it genocide? Absolutely not. By your reasoning, any civilian deaths during prolonged armed conflict constitute genocide. That just isn’t the case.
You are defending it. You are actively helping to PERPETRATE it.
It seems that anything short of saying Israel is the Little Satan would qualify in your eyes as helping genocide. I don’t defend targetting civilians. Most of the time I think my leaders are doing the wrong thing. I do defend military operations when they are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks on Israel.
I know you were born into them, that you’ve been conditioned your whole life to slide around the ugliness in defense of your existence where you exist, but cut it out!
The only thing I can say to this is this: We’re here, some of us are queer (not me personally, not that there’s anything wrong with that), get used to it!
Since Israel isn’t going anywhere, trying to convince us that our very existence is unjust will just widen the gap between the Israeli and Palestinian positions. You don’t have to be happy Israel exists, but it is the reality. The only question is where can we go from here, realistically.
Maybe this will go a bajillionth of an inch toward helping….
I agree with Seth Freedman to a certain degree. Much of what we do in the occupied territories is unjustified, like the checkpoints and lack of punishment for settlers who attack Palestinians. I disagree with his assertion that there needs to be an existential threat to the Jewish people for Israel to justify its existence. That might have been the case in 1948, but it isn’t anymore.
Ann:
Once Israeli politicians come to their senses?’ Its a rather large collective psychosis you all live in, when on earth will that be?
Good question. I’ll do my best to get the right kind of politicians elected, those that are more likely to, at first, halt all settlement expansion and tear down settlements that are illegal even under Israeli law. The next step would be to gradually dismantle the rest of the settlements, but some of the settlements close to the green line would probably stay put until the final agreement determines their fate.
You are way off on your causal analysis re perceived Palestinian violence and attacks going on during negotiations.
In the 1990’s the situation was quite clearly one where terrorists kept striking Israel during the negotiations with the clear intent of thwarting them. In the 2000’s it is perhaps less clear. What came first – the Palestinian attacks or the Israeli attacks? Both sides share the same blame.
All Israel is doing against Palestinians is because they are Palestinians.
That’s a very distorted and simplistic way of looking at it. By the same token I could say all Palestinians are doing to Israelis is because they are Israelis. There’s a real conflict here over territory. Most of those who are detained are peope who are planning attacks on Israel. This isn’t done for racist reasons.
Wake up, Israel is an apartheid, not a democratic regime. It explicitly defines itself on an ethno-religious-nationalist-messianic ideology. It treats one fifth of its citizen very differently. It oppresses and imprisons a whole people, practising slow-mo genocide.
It isn’t an apartheid state. Inside the green line it is a flawed democracy, but still a democracy. It is true that it discriminates the Arab citizens of Israel and there is no excuse for that. This must be rectified. Still, that discrimination, as serious as it is, does not amount to apartheid.
As for the “ethno-religious-nationalist-messianic ideology”, there’s nothing messianic about Israel. Only the religious right sees Israel that way. As for the other parts, well, since the Jews are the ethnic-religious-national majority we are free to define our country as Jewish and to determine our immigration policy like any other country does. We should not impose Judaism and Jewish culture on the non-Jews and we should not disenfranchise them. We should also realize this is the country of the minority just as much as it is the country of the majority.
Do you never ask yourself why these people live in “horrible conditions”? Will you not wake up and recognise Israeli culpability?
Israel may have created the refugee problem, but when it comes to refugees outside of the occupied territories, the Arab states are the ones who oppress the Palestinians who live in them. Even if they expected them one day to return to Israel that’s no excuse for the horrible conditions they left them in. Israel is responsible for the situation in the West Bank and Gaza (even though conditions there were created by Jordan and Egypt, but Israel did not do anything to make the Palestinians’ lives better).
Most of those who are detained are people who are planning attacks on Israel.
This can not be proven, any democratic country of laws cannot simply throw people in jail based on suspicion or claims of suspicion which are often very doubtful. Moreover, the person in question should know of the charge (suspicion) against them, yet in Israel that information is withheld from Palestinian detainees, so there is no meaningful way that the detainees can appeal. Also, the period of detention can be extended indefinitely — there have been hundreds of people in detention for five years with no charge, no trial according to BtSelem. Obviously it is also open to abuse, and there is no judicial oversight which you have previously mentioned.
We recall in 2006 the egregious act of Israel detaining dozens of Palestinians holding senior positions in the Palestinian Authority, some of them Hamas ministers, and most of the Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council in the West Bank — forty-five members of the PLC in all. This is quite unacceptable, kidnapping peoples representatives en masse and denying them their liberty. It is highly doubtful they suddenly one day constituted a security threat after months of holding their positions. The State of Israel allowed the elections in the Palestinian Authority in which the arrested officials were elected. Major-General Yair Naveh, of the OC Central Command, said that the senior Palestinian officials would be released upon the release of Gilad Shalit. This is a breach of natural justice (no charge, no trial, no defence) and of international humanitarian law: an occupying state is not permitted to detain residents of the occupied territory inside its territory.
Collective punishment, which Israel routinely employs, is both immoral and illegal. The Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, protects civilians in occupied territories and clearly states that “[n]o protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed.” The imposition of collective punishment is also a war crime under customary international law. It also works against Israel and a just resolution to this conflict, creating more misery and bitterness toward Israel. Israel is ensuring (and in effect helping to produce) greater enmity toward it. The suspicions become a self-fulfilling prophecy and create a vicious cycle.
there’s nothing messianic about Israel. Only the religious right sees Israel that way.
The messianism is very much there in the political symbolism and national mythology (not to be taken literally but nevertheless still important in informing how a country sees itself) instanced in the words “light unto nations”, a phrase I see constantly referred to and invoked.
The religious right have a political influence disproportionate to their numbers. They are especially fanatical about the illegal settlements, so I am doubtful the threat of withholding re-settlement assistance would evacuate a hardcore of them. In 2004 Rabbi Lior, head of the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria, as well as Rabbi Druckman, decreed that the Knesset could not decide to evacuate settlements, and that soldiers were allowed to refuse the order to evacuate settlers. Lior went further, infamously stating that the Israel Defense Forces was allowed to kill innocent people. “There should be no feeling of guilt at the morality of foreigners”, he said. In 2002, Rabbi Aviner, another graduate of the right wing Mercaz Harav yeshiva, compared the road map peace plan to the appeasement of Hitler and considers the evacuation of settlements a crime. To these religious right-wingers, they are God’s Chosen People and Palestinians are entitled to absolutely nothing simply because they are Palestinians.
Israel is not simply failing to make Palestinian lives better, that wording casts it in a far more (and falsely) benign light unfortunately. The State of Israel is actively, deliberately, consciously making the conditions in the OPT (to which I specifically refer) much, much worse. Gaza is a prison. The conditions there are not historic relics of the past (Egypt has helped recently in providing some let-up), they are a direct result of Israeli policies.
Addendum: I agree with Richard Silverstein when he writes, on observing the influence of the ultra-othodox, ultra-conservative Haredim in Israel:
I occasionally visit The Magnes Zionist when I remember to; he is, like you, a dual US and Israeli citizen. He is also an orthodox Jew. Here he reminds us of Israeli policies in the West Bank, which are a smidgen better than for Gaza, dubbing them ‘ethnic cleansing lite’:
When Israel ends its military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, I’d be happy to stop calling it in apartheid. Until it relinquishes the occupation of Palestine and stops insisting upon having the OPT under its military jurisdiction, I will continue to call it this (whites could democratically vote for their reps in South Africa too, doesn’t change apartheid). Its not as bad as South Africa’s in some things, much much worse in others (Jew-only roads, hogging water and other resources), but nevertheless IMO entirely warrants the description.
An interesting thing I read today from this article:
Administrative detention is certainly abused and judicial oversight is insufficient. Even so, I support the use of detention in certain cases when there is enough evidence the person is dangerous but there is not enough evidence for an indictment, but there should be very few cases like these. I oppose detaining “bargaining cards” just for the sake of bargaining.
Each side needs to deal with its extremists. The right wingers certainly are a problem, both in reaching a deal and in implementing it. It will be hard, but we have no choice but to confront them.
When the time comes for evactuation, the hardcore won’t be deterred by the fact that they won’t be compensated. The main incentive would be if they were told that after a certain date they’d have to deal with Palestinian authorities and not Israel. The semi-hardcore would probably leave rather than deal with the Palestinian army. Then only the most fanatic will stay in the settlements and they can be dealt with as they were dealt with during the pullout from Gaza. It won’t be easy, but it can be done.
In truth, I’d be happy to let them live as a minority in the Palestinian State, though the Palestinians will rightly demand that they leave. Who needs these nuts? The Palestinians will also want us to evacuate them and not to leave it to them. They’d be right on that point, too. So the government should threaten the settlers that they’d have to deal with the Palestinians, but in the end the IDF would take care of them. I realize this might sound a bit fantastical since it is nearly impossible to prepare the army to evacuate the settlers without the settlers getting wind of it.
I didn’t mean to make it sound as if Israel isn’t making Palestinians’ lives miserable. This is both immoral and counterproductive. I just wrote a blog post about The Magnes Zionist’s post – the policy of revoking the residency of those who live abroad for a period of time is absolutely wrong.
Well, it could be argued that in 1949 Israel accepted Res. 194, but not the right of return, since it wasn’t practicable then and it isn’t practicable now.
In truth I’d be happy to let all Israelis live as a minority inside Palestine. That’s how it was for centuries and how it should be now. In truth I have gotten to the point where I feel, if we were to illegally and completely heartlessly give territory to Jews for Israel, it should have been the South Pole.
The Nakba Of Ni’lin
99: I really don’t see any room for dialogue with you. If you can’t even grudgingly accept the fact that Israel is not going to disappear, there’s nothing for us to talk about.
Well, cool. My point kinda was that you shouldn’t be talking; you should be opening your head so the atrocities can stop. So good.
[BTW, I want the atrocities to disappear, and it no longer matters to me whether it takes disappearing Israel to accomplish it.]