Worldview: Israel & Palestinians
by A Concerned Citizen
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Retired on 31 December 2007
Table of Contents
General
Introduction
Some History
Palestinian Claims to Jerusalem
The 'Peace Process'
Walls and Protection
Israel Lobby
US Support for Israel
Criticism of Israel
Arab Viewpoints
Solving the Problem
Lebanon War 2006
Abduction in Gaza
The War Spreads
Aftermath of the War
Life Goes On
Other Articles
News Updates
News Updates 2007
General
Introduction
16 Jun 06: I was late in starting this page, since I had already expressed my views on Israel's right to exist and the poisonous Arab (or rather Muslim) hatred of Israel's presence in any form. I figured that this topic was a dead end, but of course I was wrong. It will continue to be a major issue for the world, so I will use this page to record important news items and occasional opinions. To begin, here is a list of articles:
UPDATE (21 May 07): Until fairly recently, I simply swallowed the standard self-exonerating Israeli account of the Israel-Palestinian conflict (e.g. see the links in the first paragraph of my old article). But ever since the disaster in Iraq, I have been opening my mind to alternative viewpoints. In particular, an authoritative scholar like Chalmers Johnson has convinced me that the United States has often been guilty of 'imperialistic' — or at least interventionist — behavior. (In practice, the two are difficult to distinguish.) My new skeptical mood has prompted me to reexamine all conventional wisdom, including that regarding the sacred cow of Israel. Various revisionist historians in Israel itself present a case that seems at least plausible and reasonable. Indeed, one notices a more honest and vigorous criticism of Israel among Israelis than among American Jews.
So, in brief, I simply do not know how to apportion blame in the bitter and ongoing conflict between Israel and its neighbors. I now suspect that there is plenty of blame to go around, and the hagiographic view of Israeli history is untenable. In particular, it seems rather likely that the Israeli right has been trying to strangle the Palestinians out of the West Bank, with a sustained policy of occupation and settlements. The occupation is not unjustified given the unceasing Palestinian terrorism, but the terrorism must be expected if the occupation is as severe as alleged. The settlements seem like a great provocation under any circumstances — a clear indication of Israel's intention to stay. But neither can I agree with the Palestinians and Arabs who put all the blame on Israel. Clearly, many of them have wanted to destroy Israel, and still do. For now, I am trying to study the tragic situation with an open mind. And please remember that I keep old opinions intact on my webpages, so that I can later review the evolution of my thinking.
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Some History
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Dershowitz Rebukes Carter (22 Nov 06): Alan Dershowitz, who once enthusiastically worked for Jimmy Carter, is disappointed with what he considers the many historical errors and prejudices in Carter's new book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. (Indeed, the very title is prejudiced, according to Dershowitz.) Carter is generally deemed to be a man of good-will, and smart too, so that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are taken by Dershowitz to be sadly representative of even the better minds on the left. (Note: I used to swallow the standard Zionist view of the founding of Israel, which is that of Dershowitz. It may still be mostly true, but I can no longer simply accept it as 'scripture', so to speak.)
NOTE (4 Jun 07): The previous paragraph was recently rewritten. I had previously taken Dershowitz' side, almost as a gut instinct, but lately I am trying to be more neutral, for reasons expressed in the updates to follow.
[. . .]
UPDATE (31 Mar 07): I now think that the fuss over Carter's views is more complicated than I thought back when I wrote this article. See here.
UPDATE (2 Apr 07): Further doubts about my previously whole-hearted support for Israel can be found here. See also here.
Pro-Zionist Websites
Alternative Views
Back to Some History
Richard Cohen Calls Israel a Mistake (19 Jul 06; revised 4 Jun 07): Richard Cohen is a decent, intelligent and liberal columnist, whom I generally enjoy reading. However, he may go too far in an article called Hunker Down With History. He says that Israel was 'an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable'. He is Jewish, so this amount to a brave though possibly misguided bit of open-mindedness on his part. (How many Arabs have even bothered to condemn Palestinian terrorism?) Israeli blogger Israel Matzav offers Cohen this history lesson:
Prior to 1870, when Jews started to return to the Holy Land in large numbers, there were fewer than 100,000 Arabs living in what is today the State of Israel — including Yesha (the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District).
This small number of nomadic, tribal Arabs who lived in the Holy Land before the modern Jewish return never considered themselves to be a separate people or nation.
The Arabs who lived in the Land of Israel were not 'Palestinians' but Arabs — part of a huge Arab people with 22 very large independent nations that control one-ninth of the land mass on the planet Earth. [. . .]
Israel is anything but a mistake, and history shows the justice of Israel's cause. With the exception of the period between the two Jewish Temples between roughly 586 and 516 BCE, Jews ruled this land continuously from approximately 1300 BCE until 68 CE. Since that time, no other government has been based in Israel, no other country has called Jerusalem its capital, and no other people has called this land its home. It is not history that is Israel's enemy but the false narrative of history presented to the World by the Arab Muslims. It is not history that is Israel's enemy, but Arab attempts to wipe out the vestiges of that history, as if destroying all of the Temple artifacts on the Temple Mount will confirm that it was 'always' Haram al-Sharif, that two Jewish Temples never stood there and that Jesus never argued with money changers there.
This country was deserted swampland for much of the period between 68 CE and the beginning of the return of larger numbers of Jews started in 1870. Israel's interior areas were mainly a desert-like wasteland while her coast was a malaria-ridden swamp. But Jews always prayed three times a day that God should gather them in from their diaspora and bring them back to this country. Many Jews attempted to come here on their own. Jews were a majority of the population of Jerusalem in the 19th century, and settled many of the cities of the Galilee as well. In 1844 — when the Land of Israel was controlled by the Turkish Muslims — the Turkish census counted 7,120 Jews and 5,000 Muslims living in Jerusalem. Thus, Jerusalem was already a Jewish city 160 years ago. Until an Arab massacre wiped them out in 1929, there was even a large Jewish community in Hebron, which included a major Talmudical academy, which was transplanted from the village of Slobodka in Lithuania. He then quotes an interesting 19th century eye-witness account from non-Zionist Mark Twain. Yes, indeed. The 'Palestinians' don't belong is Israel but somewhere else in the huge Arab land mass. The 'Palestinian struggle' is really about pushing Israel into the sea. And the fact that the Arabs have more rights in Israel than elsewhere in the Arab world means nothing to Israel's enemies — a revealing fact in itself.
UPDATE (4 Jun 07): I revised the above paragraphs slightly today. Previously, I had said that Richard Cohen had 'put his foot in his mouth'. I have decided to try to be more neutral on the topic of Israel. I certainly don't want the Israelis pushed into the sea, but I have come to feel that the whole issue of Israel is a kind of tragedy, for which no one is really guilty, much as Cohen says. The reason my feelings are changing is because I cannot really tell a Palestinian who lost his land that it was for a better cause. As for the issue of terrorism, simple logic forces me to agree that it is not really that much worse than war as waged by the powerful, with planes and bombs. We like to claim that we do not target civilians, and that collateral damage is unfortunate but necessary. I doubt I would buy that if I were the collateral damage. Would it be nice if the Palestinians could simply work something out with the Israelis? Of course. Are they evil if they do not? Well, we invaded an unrelated country over the destruction of a few square miles of real estate after 9/11, along with thousands of dead. The Palestinians have lost more than a few square miles, and many thousands of dead. The British went to war over the Falklands. The sinking of the Lusitania brought us into WWI. And so on. Countries go to war over relatively minor issues, to 'defend their sovereignty'. Who does the land (any land) belong to? To those who got there first? I am not so sure that should be the universal law. And anyway, the Jews have had a much longer presence in Palestine than, say, the white man in America. At the same time, I would never leave voluntarily. Perhaps it is lucky that we wiped the Indians out. It is all very sad and wearisome to think about.
20 Jul 06: Hugh Fitzgerald blasts Cohen here.
22 Jul 06: Somebody on the not terribly erudite Kos website has presented a case against Israel. I'll have to examine this sometime, to see if I know enough to respond in detail. As mentioned already, I once wrote a long article on the birth of modern Israel, which you can find here. Let that be my rebuttal.
UPDATE (31 Mar 07): As mentioned in the previous article on Jimmy Carter, I no longer blindly swallow the standard Zionist history without question. Most of it is probably true, and the Arabs have certainly been motivated by the desire to destroy Israel. However, we must ask how we would behave if our homeland — or what we perceive as our homeland — were invaded. On 9/11, we lost some large office buildings and 3000 lives, and in retaliation we plunged into Iraq, based on flimsy evidence, leading to the death of 650,000 Iraqis, according to the Lancet. It is not so clear to me that we are that much holier than the Arabs. At the same time, I accept that Israel has as much right to exist as anyone else. What determines the right to land? An historical ethnic presence? In that case, the Jews have at least as much right to Israel as we do to America. And no, I have no intention of emigrating back to Europe...
Back to Some History
Relevance of Jihad (07 Aug 06): One cannot properly understand the Palestinian and Arab struggle against Israel if one ignores the influence of jihad ideology, as almost all Western leaders do. Once one realizes the sacred and eternal nature of the jihad imperative, then discussions and deal-making seem futile. Indeed, to the devout Muslims, they are only subterfuges to buy time — a practice followed by the prophet himself during his early period of weakness. Andrew Bostom, a medical doctor during the day, has published scholarly works on the subject.
UPDATE (04 Jun 07): Once again, I must post a reminder that I no longer accept such a simplistic view. Everybody appeals to God or 'justice' when fighting a war. The Europeans and Americans certainly have long histories of aggression in the name of some noble cause, Iraq being only the latest example. I do still agree that a great many Muslims are animated by anger, wounded pride, and even an imperialistic zeal to spread Islam throughout the world, but I no longer swallow the implicit or explicit inference that we are always 'good', just because we are nominally secular and democratic. Perhaps there should be a curse on everybody's house...
Back to Some History
The New Historians (31 Aug 06): My account of Israel's history pretty much follows the conventional pro-Israel account. I have read certain websites which seemed honest and well-documented. For example, I am willing to accept the frequently quoted accounts from Mark Twain and others about how Palestine was a wasteland until the Zionists returned late in the 19th century. I did not check original sources but assumed it would be foolish to lie about them. In general, and for a variety of reasons, having to do with my impressions upon reading these online accounts, I feel that reputable-looking pro-Israel websites such as the Jewish Virtual Library or Eretz Yisroel are factually correct.
Of course, with historians, there are always debates about the facts. Some deny the Holocaust and have written whole books about it. If I read only those books, I might feel convinced they were right. How can I be certain of any account of history without being a historian myself and reviewing countless first-hand sources? Why should I trust even those? Anyhow, at the end of the day, I believe that the 'conventional' account about Israel is quite close to the elusive truth. For one thing, it sounds reasonable. There history of Palestine is indeed one of a succession of empires, so that the Palestinian Muslims have no iron-clad claim to every square inch. The Jews wanted a little bit of land, to which they had historical ties, and the Arabs wanted no Israel whatsoever. This is entirely consistent with everything I have read about the mentality of Islam. Even if there is some ambiguity over who has a 'right' to this or that parcel of land, the fact remains that the Arabs have shown an implacable and fanatical hatred to any accommodation, while the Israelies went as far as Barak's daring and generous offer at Camp David, which was summarily rejected as usual.
Nevertheless, I will open this section on the so-called New Historians, who challenge the conventional account of Israeli history. I dismiss someone like Norman Finkelstein as too obviously extreme, and I was not impressed by his online debates with Alan Dershowitz. However, some of the New Historians, like Benny Morris, are Israelis who grew up in kibbutzes and so on. They seem less combative than Finkelstein, at least at a first glance. So perhaps they have something worthwhile to say. Or, at least, I should be aware of what they are saying. I will collect relevant articles here as I come across them. I suspect, though, that it's a debate much like that over the Israel Lobby. Of course there is some truth to it, in that many American Jews care about Israel and have organized politically in its favor, as is their right. The question is one of emphasis. Do the authors draw extreme conclusions? In the case of the Israel Lobby, for example, it would be a conclusion to the effect that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the United States. I would need massive evidence to believe that, just as for Holocaust denial.
UPDATE (2 Apr 07): I just read this article by Ilan Pappe, and I now realize that the truth about Israeli history may not be quite as I have been led to believe. For instance, he claims, based on recently opened archives, that the Zionists had planned to expel the Palestinians since at least the 1930s, and that conventional David and Goliath accounts of the war of 1948 are not accurate. What to think? This may sound terribly naive, but not being a scholar, my best option seems to be to get an idea of the character of the man. So I turn to a page like this and see a picture of a guy who seems pretty nice, unlike the taciturn and combative Finkelstein. And his interview seems sincere and his thesis plausible, being based on archives that were not available until recently. So I am willing to give him some credibility. (See also this video.)
Perhaps Israel is a tragic case of two tribes with a legitimate claim to the same land, and both are guilty of violence and aggression. Isn't that just the history of the Middle East, if not the world? Perhaps Americans should give the North (and South) American continents back to the Indians. Or maybe the only decent solution is for people to be decent and learn to live together. Still, I don't blame the Israelis for fearing for their existence if Palestinians should become more than 20% or so within the boundaries of a democratic Israel. Annihilation might well be the result, even if every attempt to embrace the Arabs were to start right now. And I still think there is something to the idea that Islam breeds intolerance, which it inherited from Judaism and Christianity. It's as though the chickens of tribal ideology are coming home to roost. God may be having the last laugh.
UPDATE (22 May 07): The bitter debate between Dershowitz and Finkelstein makes for some interesting reading. Due to Finkelstein's pugnacious appearance on the famous Democracy Now video, I had assumed that Finkelstein was a grenade thrower who at least overstated his case in an irresponsible way. Moreover, I expected the most professional behavior from Alan Dershowitz, who is, after all, at Harvard Law School and has a lot to lose in terms of reputation. However, this article by a PhD and JD named Frank Menetrez indicates that Dershowitz' tactics may not be so professional. It's all a bit complicated, and I'll let you decide. Relevant articles by Dershowitz are to be found here and here.
Articles
Criticism of the Revisionists
Indeed, 'there is scarcely a document that he does not twist'. As Karsh demonstrates in detail, Morris and his cohorts have 'violated every tenet of bona fide research': they misrepresent documents, resort to partial quotes, withhold evidence, make false assertions, and rewrites original documents. Such is the incompetence of these Arabists that they even neglect Arab archival material, relying almost exclusively on Western — often only secondary — sources.
'Through documentary manipulation', observes Karsh, the Israeli 'scholars' (lauded by Walt and Mearsheimer) have turned 'Israeli history on its head'.
Although Karsh has been attacked personally and stigmatized, the blistering, textual bitch-slap he dealt these charlatans remains unassailable. A dejected Morris even wrote to the Times Literary Supplement to admit that 'Karsh has a point. My treatment of transfer thinking before 1948 was, indeed, superficial.' Dershowitz vs. Finkelstein
Back to Some History
Tony Karon's View (4 Jun 07): I will take the liberty of quoting at length from this fine article by Tony Karon, as it presents a seemingly fair-minded account of the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio from a 'leftist' perspective. Perhaps I should say, from a non-Zionist perspective ... a good rebuttal to, say, a Daniel Pipes. Such an account is standard fare in a European paper like The Guardian but is scarecely heard over here in the United States, where it violates an unofficial taboo of American politics — speak no wrong of Israel — adhered to by our timorous and self-serving mainstream media. (I'm not saying that I agree with all of this, only that it is dishonest to exclude such views from public discourse, as we generally do in most of our media. Instead, we are fed a steady diet of the right-wing Zionist viewpoint, as though we were cattle to be manipulated.)
Sensing the escalating conflict between the Arab population and the European Jewish settlers who had been allowed by the British, since their conquest of Palestine in 1917, to settle there and establish the infrastructure of statehood — and moved by the impulse to create a sanctuary for the survivors of the Holocaust while avoiding giving most of them the choice of moving to the U.S. or other Western countries — the U.N. recommended in 1947 that Palestine be partitioned, to create separate Jewish and Arab states. The Zionists were disappointed by the plan, because they had hoped to have all of Palestine become a Jewish state. And the fact that it left Jerusalem, where 100,000 Jews lived, within the territory of the Arab zone, albeit run as an international city, was particularly irksome. But the Zionist leadership also knew that the plan was as good as they were going to get via diplomacy, and accepted the plan. (The rest, of course, they would acquire in battle, in 1948 and 1967, in wars that they could blame on their enemies — after all, 40 years after the 1967 war, during which time Israel has been at peace with the enemy it faced on that flank, the West Bank remains very much in Israeli hands, with close to half a million Israelis settled there.)
And, of course, war would likely have looked inevitable, because the Arabs were unlikely to accept a deal in which they were, by definition, the losers. Today, Israel insists that the demographic 'facts on the ground' must be taken into account in any peace settlement, and demands that it be allowed to maintain the large settlement blocs built on the best land in the West Bank since 1967. And the Bush Administration has formally endorsed this claim. But look at the 'facts on the ground' of 1947/8: The Partition Plan awarded 55% of the land to the Jewish state, including more than 80% of land under cultivation. At the time, Jews made up a little over one third of the total population, and owned some 7% of the land. Moreover, given the demographic demands of the Zionist movement for a Jewish majority, the plan was an invitation to tragedy: The population within the boundaries of the Jewish state envisaged in the 1947 partition consisted of around 500,000 Jews and 400,000 Arabs.
Hardly surprising, then, that the Arabs of Palestine and beyond rejected the partition plan.
For the Arab regimes, the creation of a separate Jewish sovereign state in the Holy Land over which the Crusades had been fought was a challenge to their authority; it was perceived by their citizenry as a test of their ability to protect their land and interests from foreign invasion. And so they went to war believing they could reverse what the U.N. had ordered on the battlefield. For the Jews of Palestine in 1948, a number of them having narrowly survived extermination in Europe, the war was a matter of physical survival. Although in the mythology, the war pitted a half million Jews against 20 million Arabs, in truth Israel was by far the stronger and better-organized and better-armed military power. And so what Israel called the War of Independence saw the Jewish state acquire 50% more territory than had been envisaged in the partition plan. The maps below describe the difference between the Israel envisaged by the UN in 1947 and the one that came into being in the war of 1948.
But maps don't convey the disaster that befell the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. The war also allowed the Zionist movement to resolve its 'demographic concerns', as some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs found themselves driven from their homes and land — many driven out at gunpoint, the majority fleeing in fear of further massacres such as the one carried out by the Irgun at Dir Yassein, and all of them subject to the same ethnic-cleansing founding legislation passed by the new Israeli Knesset that seized the property of any Arab absent from his property on May 8, 1948, and forbad the refugees from returning. The revised partition effected by the war left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians destitute in refugee camps in neighboring Arab countries, a drama that continues to play out today in northern Lebanon.
[. . .]
For Jews of my generation who came of age during the anti-apartheid struggle, there was no shaking the nagging sense that what Israel was doing in the West Bank was exactly what the South African regime was doing in the townships. Even as we waged our own intifada against apartheid in South Africa, we saw daily images of young Palestinians facing heavily armed Israeli police in tanks and armored vehicles with nothing more than stones, gasoline bombs and the occasional light weapon; a whole community united behind its children who had decided to cast off the yoke under which their parents suffered. And when Yitzhak Rabin, more famous as a signatory on the Oslo Agreement, ordered the Israeli military to systematically break the arms of young Palestinians in the hope of suppressing an entirely legitimate revolt, thuggery had become a matter of national policy. It was only when some of those same young men began blowing themselves up in Israeli restaurants and buses that many Israel supporters were once again able to construe the Israelis as the victim in the situation; during the intifada of the 1980s they could not question who was David and who was Goliath. Even for those of us who had grown up in the idealism of the left-Zionist youth movements, Israel had become a grotesque parody of everything we stood for.
[. . .]
Many pro-Israel commentators today lament what they see as a shift in the Palestinian political mindset from the secular nationalism of Fatah to a more implacable Islamist worldview, supposedly infinitely less reasonable because it couches its opposition to Israel in religious terms. Yet, what is often overlooked is how the Israeli victory in 1967 effected a similar shift in Zionist ideology away from the secular nationalism of Ben Gurion's generation to a far more dangerous religious nationalism. Tom Segev, my favorite Israeli historian, writes that the 1967 war resulted in many Israelis coming to see the army as an instrument of messianic theology. The knitted yarmulke of the settlers moving to colonize the West Bank in the wake of the 1967 victory came to replace the cloth cap of the socialist kibbutznik as the symbol of Zionist pioneering. Segev quotes from Rav Kook, the founder of the settlement movement: 'There is one principal thing: the state. It is entirely holy, and there is no flaw in it... the state is holy in any and every case.'
The religious Zionists saw the West Bank and holy land to be 'redeemed', or 'liberated' by settlement, and with the tacit support of all Israeli governments since then (and the more active support of some) they rushed to build permanent structures and settle a civilian population there, in defiance of international law, in order to preclude the possibility of returning that land to the Palestians as a basis for peace.
Today, talk of a two-state solution to the conflict must reckon with the facts on the ground. The 1947 Partition plan left the Palestinians with 45 percent of the territory of Palestine; the 1948 war left them holding onto 22 percent, which fell into Israeli hands in 1967. Even when it talks about a two-state solution, Israel still demands to keep some of the best lands and the key water sources within that 22 percent. A simple glance at the map above [blue areas are settlements; click to enlarge] should be enough to raise serious questions about the viability of a separate, sovereign Palestinian nation-state. It's hard to imagine such an entity, blessed with few natural resources and with hardly any independent economic base, maintaining an independent economic existence, even as it is forced to accomodate hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees returning from refugee camps in Lebanon and elsewhere (as most versions of the two-state plan envisage). Indeed, such an entity may well have the feel of an enlarged refugee camp, whose survival is largely dependent on handouts. Back to Some History
Other Articles
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Palestinian Claims to Jerusalem
Introduction (01 Jul 06): Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the history of the Middle East knows that the Jewish claim to Jerusalem is much stronger than the Palestinian claim. Jerusalem is to the Jews what Rome is to the Catholics, but to the Muslims Jerusalem is merely an imperialistic trophy and an excuse for fighting. As Daniel Pipes says,
The reason the Palestinians and Muslims make such a fuss over Jerusalem is the same reason that they hate the very existence of Israel. They wish to see Islam swallow up the entire Middle East, if not more. The mere fact that some people even ask whether Israel has a 'right to exist' shows how complete is the Muslim subjugation of a region of the world which has been Pagan, Jewish, and Christian long before it was Muslim. We now take it for granted that the Middle East is 'supposed' to be Muslim, but in fact it all came about as part of bloody fanatical imperialism by a small desert tribe. For the Jews, there is a special hatred. They were the first to be beheaded en masse by Muhammad.
UPDATE (15 Oct 07): As with every other section on this page, my views have changed considerably as I have learned more about the Palestinian side of the conflict — some of the best sources being Jews who care about justice for all! I still don't know who has a better religious claim to Jerusalem, but the viable solution seems to be to divide Jerusalem into Jewish and Arab halves, along with a retreat to the 1967 borders, with some swapping of land, i.e. what Finkelstein calls the 'International Consensus', ratified each year at the U.N., except for the US, Israel, and some 'South Sea islands'.
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The 'Peace Process'
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Introduction (07 Aug 06): People often assume that any kind of diplomatic 'peace process' is a good thing. In real life, this may not be true. There have been a number of good articles on the web on this topic, but I am starting this section late, so I may miss many of them. Some of the best of these articles have been written by Daniel Pipes; his article below will take you back to his website.
It would seem that this section needs much more material, but does it really matter anymore?
UPDATE (5 Jun 07): As in other sections, I have repudiated my previous brainwashing by Zionists hawks and their imperialistic allies in the US. By all means, it is essential to find a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which must include a genuine and decent homeland for the Palestinians — not some measly Bantustans carved out of the less desirable portions of the West Bank. This article by Jim Lobe seems very encouraging.
Back to Peace Process
Other Articles:
More than four out of five respondents in each community said they support negotiations between Israel and Syria, while 73 percent of Jewish Americans and 79 percent of Arab Americans said they favored"serious diplomacy" with Iran over other options that could lead to war.
[. . .]
'This survey, yet again, reaffirms our assertion that most American Jews support a diplomatic approach to resolving conflicts in the Middle East — whether conflicts between Israel and its neighbors or the conflict between the U.S. and Iran', said Americans for Peace Now president Debra DeLee. Back to Peace Process
Walls and Protection
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Introduction (01 Jul 06): Daniel Pipes correctly points out the the new wall around Israel, which I favor, does not protect against Palestinian missiles, or even against abductions, as we have seen recently. As Pipes puts it,
Back to Walls and Protection
A Book on Israel's Wall (09 Aug 06): Here is a book by David Makovsky of WINEP, who often appears on the NewsHour as an expert on Israel. His frequent debating opponent is Hisham Melhem, Washington correspondent for the Beirut newspaper, As-Safir. Together, they present a picture of calm rationality, each arguing ably for his respective side. If only the Arab world had more Melhams, the problems with Israel could be solved. Anyway, the following book should be well worth reading. It is a free PDF available for download.
by David Makovsky
Even if negotiations do not resume in the short term, the fence can function as a provisional border that could be modified if Palestinians make real progress toward halting terrorism. In any case, regardless of the fence's immediate impact on the peace process, it has become increasingly clear that keeping Israelis and Palestinians apart now may be the only way to bring them together in the future. Back to Walls and Protection
Google Search on Israel's Wall (20 Aug 06): The first few pages of a Google search on Israel's wall turns up articles that are almost entirely critical:
Perhaps Israel should try harder to explain itself to the world. Or perhaps sympathizers of Israel don't bother searching on this topic, because they already know the answer. The foes of Israel also know very well why the wall is being built, but it serves as useful fodder for further Israel bashing. A lot of leftists among these critics!
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Is the Wall Grabbing Land? (02 Apr 06): Articles such as this are casting some doubt on my wholehearted support for Israel. That had been based, until now, on my conviction that the Arabs have wanted to destroy this small country since Day 1 and that the Palestinian terrorists still have the extermination of Israel in their charters. I have heard this so often, though admittedly from sources that may all be pro-Israel, that I have come to accept it as the unvarnished truth. I have to believe someone at some point, and the articles seemed mature and honest enough.
However, with the Iraq debacle, my faith in America's overall foreign policy wisdom has been shaken, and I now read 'radical' literature I would have disdained before. Basically, this literature claims that there has been a strong imperialistic component to American foreign policy, at least since the end of the Second World War, if not before that. This thesis seems increasingly true to me. Unfortunately, the 'radical' literature also places a lot of blame on Israel, but since I am taking a new open-minded attitude to such matters, I am reading that too.
Suffice it to say for now that the literature claims that the new wall is not just to protect against terrorism but also to make the settlements permanent. Even more, the idea is to carve the West Bank into Palestinian Bantustans and choke off their lives, so that they ultimately give up and leave. Frankly, I agree that their natural country is Jordan, but perhaps that is easy for me to say. They would arrive as beggars, but are they not that already?
If the wall had followed the simple 1967 borders, then that would have been fine with me. However, it is claimed to snake deep into the West Bank and even encircle the Palestinian Bantustans from the East. It is hard to know whose maps to believe, but I wouldn't be too surprised if this is basically true. That would explain the Israeli right's stubbornness on settlements over the years: they always intended to grab the West Bank eventually. We never hear of that, only of the Palestinian terrorism. However, another side of the story is that many Israelis feel that the 1967 borders would seriously endanger Israel. Quite a conundrum!
I'll need to study this in more detail, but I post these remarks as my acknowledgement that the issue is not quite as simple as I had thought. I will add that I have also become increasingly aware of how neither American politicians nor the mainstream media will dare to offend AIPAC, the right-wing Jewish lobby in America. I am beginning to think that AIPAC is having a detrimental effect on US foreign policy, by being treated as a sacred cow. But I hasten to add that recent polls show that the vast majority of American Jews are liberal and antiwar. Some pro-Israel types may be playing a sneaky game of confusing criticism of AIPAC with criticism of Jews in general. Maybe even Alan Dershowitz, who seemed like a good guy to me.
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Other Articles
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Israel Lobby
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Mearsheimer-Walt Paper (27 Jun 06): There has been some controversy in recent months over the so-called 'Israel Lobby', especially relating to a paper by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published online under the aegis of Harvard University. My common sense tells me that this alleged lobby exists to some extent but is hardly anything sinister. Nor is it particularly homogeneous, since even in Israel Jews have all kinds of political views ranging from the most conservative to the most liberal. It is only stupid people who march in lockstep.
However, in defense of the offending authors, let me say that I am all in favor of free discussion, provided there is basic honesty and integrity. If people want to discuss the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, then fine, as long as it is polite, factual and tries to see different points of view. Finally, let us be honest that perfectly decent American Jews may feel deep loyalty to both Israel and America, and there is no law of nature that says that the interests of those two nations will forever coincide. Welcome to reality.
By the way, the neoconservative dream to democratize the Middle East was not particularly 'Jewish' or 'Israeli', even if many prominent neoconservatives happen to be Jewish Americans. George Bush and Dick Cheney don't seem terribly Jewish to me. Are you going to suggest that they were hypnotized?
UPDATE (10 Feb 07): I still haven't read the notorious Mearsheimer-Walt paper and don't intend to anytime soon. (Bloggers read about wonk papers; they don't actually read them.) Nevertheless, I would like to test some of Alan Dershowitz's logic, based on what I suppose the facts to be. In this Huffington Post blog, he writes
One delicate point, to which I have already alluded, is that decent Jews may very well feel loyalty to both America and Israel. Why shouldn't they? Of course, the problem is that this raises ugly insinuations of potential disloyalty. I am confident that most American Jews would obey the law and remain loyal to America, should a major crisis arise between Israel and the USA. I feel less sure about the loyalty of American Muslims, taken as a whole. You may call that bigoted, but that is my impression, as of today.
As for power over the media, we should most definitely and candidly scrutinize the biases of our pundits, most of whom were cheerleaders for the Iraq disaster. No decent person will claim that a hypothetical, monolithic entity called 'the Jews' simply presses buttons and makes stories appear in the press, but at the same time no sophisticated person will deny that various Jewish thinkers and activists, of various political persuasions, exert a disproportionate influence on the media. In a way, I consider this a fair reward for being intelligent and capable, but we should still be shining a light on every kind of bias and distortion, such as they may be. And I have always maintained that the ultimate source of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors has been the intransigence of the Palestinians, who, for the most part, have consistently called for the destruction of Israel, in Arabic if not in English.
Finally, regarding the duped Goyim, such as Bush and Cheney, it is not the fault of the Jewish public. It seems quite clear that a small group of 'neocons', many of whom were indeed Jewish, sold the administration on the Iraq blunder. Those neocons who happen to be Jewish represent a small slice of the American Jewish public, most of which tends to be liberal and reluctant to get involved in war. (Thank God!) Bush may have been 'hypnotized' in the sense that his mind lacks sophistication and was easily fooled by simplistic rhetoric and dubious facts, but Cheney is far more shrewd and savvy and knew full well what he was doing. At least, that is my impression. Anyhow, if you get fooled by somebody, it is your fault, especially if you are among the power elite of the country. The Republicans are naturally aggressive and inclined to military solutions, and the Democrats have been spineless and self-serving since as long as I can remember. That is their fault and our problem. No need to blame that on the Jews, not even the neocons.
In summary, I wonder if Dershowitz isn't making a mountain out of a molehill, perhaps to intimidate candid debate. I would have to study the Walt-Mearsheimer paper to know for sure, but it does seem as though Dershowitz is protesting a bit too much. Is he presuming that a couple of nondescript wonks have an influence over the American public similar to what he claims they are claiming about the so-called Jewish Lobby? When he raises a seemingly gratuitous reference to the medieval 'blood libel', it sounds like the kind of malicious insinuation that is recognized as libelous in some courts of law. And if the Walt-Mearsheimer paper indeed fails to be sufficiently fair and balanced, then I wish somebody would write that fair and balanced paper, which doesn't seem to exist, since nobody refers to it. Why has no one done it yet? That sounds a bit suspicious...
UPDATE (25 Dec 07): Well, I guess I am making a bit of progress. The previous remarks from way back when now seem rather naive. Not only do I no longer put all the blame on the Palestinians, but I also have a much better idea of the power and limits of the Israel Lobby. Just jump straight to the articles by Stephen Zunes below for a balanced and informed account.
Mearsheimer-Walt Paper
On the Israel Lobby
Back to Israel Lobby
Mearsheimer Addresses CAIR (31 Aug 06): I watched this video of John Mearsheimer addressing CAIR on the Israel Lobby and the recent war in Lebanon, and I see no great mystery or problem. All that Mearsheimer said was that the US administration and public overwhelmingly supported Israel in the recent war, and the rest of the world overwhelmingly did not. So what else is new? Further, he implied that this indicates unfair bias on our part.
I beg to differ. The facts are simple enough. Hezbollah attacked Israel with rockets. Israel retaliated, as it had to, and took great pains to avoid civilian casualties, by giving advance warning and losing the advantage of surprise. Hezbollah makes a point of firing rockets from civilian areas, so as to surround itself with human shields, yet the world gave Israel little or no credit for its restrained and humanitarian actions. This reflects badly on the world, not on Israel or the US. Thank goodness that democracy does not apply to the international community.
So the Mearsheimer brouhaha boils down to this. He is irate that the US overwhelmingly supports Israel, who deserves that support. He is entitled to his opinion. The rest of us Americans are entitled to differ. I will only add that perhaps Dershowitz and others go too far in trying to smack him down. Let him speak. He's not saying anything that is terribly misleading. There is indeed a pro-Israel lobby, though not as homogeneous as he supposes. America does support Israel by large margins. The rest of the world is wrong. This can happen.
But there is something else. Mearsheimer also argues that our close support for Israel is not in our interest, from a 'realistic' foreign policy point of view. He may have a point. Perhaps we do take a hit in world opinion, and especially Muslim opinion, for supporting tiny Israel against the ocean of Muslim hate. Good for us! The Europeans have obviously done a calculus of their interests and come down on the side of the Muslims, despite their shameful history of anti-Semitism. Let Mearsheimer speak. Let others answer. Perhaps our support for Israel is not the most profitable course for us. Thank goodness that crass profit does not determine everything in this country. Dershowitz, Krauthammer and others appear too vociferous in smacking down Mearsheimer. It makes it look as though something sinister is indeed happening. Let David Duke speak too. Who cares?
UPDATE (01 Sep 06): There is also the issue of M&W's scholarship. For example, they have taken flak for claiming that Israel had been preparing for the Lebanon war, with 'enthusiastic support' from the Bush administration, and were waiting for a pretext to invade. This is a good example of how bias creeps into scholarship and the media. Hezbollah had been building up its missile arsenal and occasionally sending a few missiles over the border. Of course Israel had to prepare contingency plans, but there is a big difference between that and wanting to start trouble. Hezbollah clearly started it this time. As for the enthusiastic support from the administration, it is claimed that these authors have presented no evidence. Perhaps they got an impression from the papers, based on unequivocal US approval of Israel's right to defend herself. Thus do motives get twisted by bias. But if all the scholars and pundits guilty of bias were eliminated, what would we have left? And who should decide? Best to have a free discussion, with vigorous rebuttals. Let's not make anyone 'taboo'. It does seem that some of Israel's defenders are trying to do that. Yet there is a limit. At some point, normal human bias veers into gross deception, as seems to have happened in many of our academic departments of Middle Eastern studies.
And a final point. M&W have also accused the 'Israel lobby' of being instrumental in leading the US into the war in Iraq. I too think that the Iraq war was a blunder. Although we were rightly concerned over WMD, it seems we jumped the gun; there are reports that, prior to the invasion, the UN inspectors were starting to get access and were finding nothing. Further, the whole democratization project has always seemed ill-conceived to me. So what was the role of the 'Jewish lobby'? No doubt the 'neocons' were pushing for war, and the names of this group are pretty well known: Wolfowitz, Feith, Kristol, Cheney, Woolsey, Kirkpatrick, ... Many are Jewish, like the first three names just cited, and many are not, like the last three names. Not all Jews were neocons or in favor of the war, but it is possible that most were in favor of the war, for a variety of reasons. Suppose they were. So what? This would simply have been part of the national debate. Even if it could be proven that most Jews were neocons and Iraq hawks, which is almost certainly untrue, it would make no difference. That would have been their democratic right. What those opposing M&W may really be worried about is that these outspoken scholars might stir up bad feeling against American Jews, under the assumption that an anti-Semitic virus lurks latent in gentiles everywhere. I think that massive American support for Israel shows this to be unfounded. And even if such a nasty virus lurked in the American public, M&W would still have a right to speak, as would their critics.
Back to Israel Lobby
Wesley Clark in Crossfire (27 Jan 07): Thank goodness Matt Yglesias can speak honestly about a taboo subject! He is Jewish, liberal and antiwar. Here he comes to General Wesley Clark's defense, after the general expressed himself in a way that left him open to smears. I knew that American Jews were divided on topics such as Israel and the Iraq war, or what to do about Iran, but I'm glad to have confirmation of something I'd long suspected: that the majority of US Jews are liberal and against the Iraq war, while certain well financed hawkish (i.e. neocon) lobbying groups exert disproportionate influence, not only on Bush but perhaps also on Democrats like Hillary (and certainly on Senator Joe Lieberman). How come so few pundits can speak with Yglesias' candor? Even other liberal Jewish commentators seem to shrink from this honest admission — an admission which makes most American Jews look good, in my opinion.
This, of course, is true. I'm Jewish and I don't think the United States should bomb Iran, but Thursday night I was talking to a Jewish friend and she does think the United States should bomb Iran. The Jewish community, in short, is divided on the issue. It's also true that most major American Jewish organizations cater to the views of extremely wealthy major donors whose political views are well to the right of the bulk of American Jews, one of the most liberal ethnic groups in the country. Furthermore, it's true that major Jewish organizations are trying to push the country into war. And, last, it's true that if you read the Israeli press you'll see that right-wing Israeli politicians are anticipating a military confrontation with Iran. ...
Everything Clark said, in short, is true. What's more, everybody knows it's true. The worst that can truthfully be said about Clark is that he expressed himself in a slightly odd way. This, it seems clear, he did because it's a sensitive issue and he worried that if he spoke plainly he'd be accused of trafficking in anti-Semitism. So he spoke unclearly and, for his trouble, got ... accused of trafficking in anti-Semitism.
James Taranto, who writes the hack 'Best of the Web' column for the online version of The Wall Street Journal's hack editorial page, likened Clark's views on this to the notorious anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Scott Johnson of the influential and moronic right-wing Power Line blog argued that "Clark's comments are not simply 'anti-Israel', and asked '[i]s it a only a matter only of parochial concern to American Jews that they are now to be stigmatized without consequence in the traditional disgusting terms — terms that used to result in eviction from the precincts of polite society — by a major figure in the Democratic Party?'
Needless to say, Clark did not stigmatize American Jews. Indeed, he went out of his way to note that the American Jewish community is divided on the issue. ... Back to Israel Lobby
Jimmy Carter Speaks Out (31 Mar 07): In November of last year, I bought Alan Dershowitz' argument that Jimmy Carter's new book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid was prejudiced against Israel and contained serious factual errors. I will continue to assume that a Harvard law professor like Dershowitz gets his facts right, notwithstanding his ardent Zionism based on his Jewish background. Perhaps I am naive, but I will take this as a reasonable working assumption. However, smart people often mislead in advocating a cause, not by outright lying, but by leaving out some relevant facts. Perhaps both Carter and Dershowitz are guilty of this.
Recently, I have come to appreciate that the West Bank settlements have been a major roadblock to peace. Of course, I was always aware of the issue, but I instinctively took Israel's side and rationalized that they were minor compared to the outrage of Palestinian terror and could even be viewed as a fair punishment for that terror. I have changed my mind since learning how the new wall snakes deep into the West Bank, carving the land into Palestinian Bantustans. (I have no problem with a wall that follows the 1967 border.) This suggests that the Israelis are there to stay, which in turn casts doubt on their sincerity all along in the quest for peace. Of course, one must distinguish between the different political factions in Israel, and there are other circumstances as well. For now, I will simply use this space to record articles on both sides of the dispute, when they pertain to Jimmy Carter. Notice how vitriolic the argument can get!
Second of all, the Arabs who inhabited the Palestine Mandate in 1948, at the time of the creation the state of Israel, considered themselves Syrians.
Third, the Palestine Mandate was not created on land taken from the Syrians or the Arabs. It was taken from the Turks.
It was not taken from the Turks by the Jews, but by the British and the French. They took it because Turkey sided with Germany in the First World War and, of course, lost. The Turkish empire had ruled the entire region including Syrian, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan for four hundred years before Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan were artificially created by the English and the French. Jordan — a state whose majority is Palestinian — occupies 80% of the Palestine Mandate.
So it is a preposterous lie to say that the Palestinians had their own land and that it was occupied by the Jews.
Fourth, the individual plots of land that Jews now own were in the first instance bought from the Arabs who regarded themselves as Syrians and who lived in the area of Israel. The only property that was confiscated was confiscated as a spoil of the aggressive war that five Arab states waged against Israel from the day of its birth. Five Arab armies invaded Israel, a sovereign state, with the declared intent of 'pushing the Jews into the sea'. The cry today of the Muslim majority in the Middle East is to 'liberate Palestine from the river to the sea'. In other words push the Jews into the sea.
By the standards of occupation and legitimacy Jimmy Carter invokes, Israel has more legitimacy as a Jewish state than Texas does as an American state, rather than a Mexican province.
The fifth Jimmy Carter lie in this lone Jimmy Carter sentence is the claim that the Jews have colonized anything. 'The Israelis have built more than 200 settlements inside Palestine.'
Why is it wrong of the Jews to live in the West Bank? (The 7000 Jews of Gaza, of course, have already been expunged as result of the Arabs' genocidal hate.) Why can't Jews have settlements in the West Bank?
The answer is because the Palestinians Arabs are filled with a racist and theocratic hate towards the Jews. They can't tolerate a non-Muslim, non-Arab people — however small a minority — living in their midst. (The 7000 Jews of Gaza — out of a population of 1.2 million — were law-abiding and peaceful and created a horticultural industry that produced ten percent of Gaza's gross national product. But they were Jews. And that was intolerable to Palestine's Nazis. So they had to be removed.)
Contrast Carter's attack on Jews living in the West bank as 'colonizers' who must be expelled with the fact that more than a million Arabs live in Israel, where Israel provides them with more rights — including the right to vote and elect Arab members of Israel's government — than any Arab who lives in any Arab state in the Middle East. I haven't been a leftist for years, because I don't believe the Arabs would ever agree to share this country with us, and I believe in the Jews' right to a national home and a state in our historic homeland. Yet what we've been doing with this dream borders on the criminal. But President Carter and I have our differences, too. I favored a compromise peace based on the offer by President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000-2001. Carter defends Yasser Arafat's refusal to accept these generous terms, or to make a counteroffer.
In fact, Carter never mentions in his book, or in his speech, that the Palestinians could have had a state in 1938, 1948, 1967 and on several other occasions. Their leaders cared more about destroying Israel than about creating Palestine. That is the core of the conflict. It is Palestinian terror, not Israeli policy, which prevents peace.
Why does Carter cling to his version of history? We know from Carter's biographer, Douglas Brinkley, that Carter and Arafat strategized together about how to improve the image of the PLO. Did Carter advise Arafat to walk away from a Palestinian state? That is an important question — one I would have asked Carter had I been given the chance.
[. . .]
And President Carter continued to make the kinds of inaccurate claims that run throughout his book. He said that Hamas began a 16-month ceasefire in August 2004. What about the Hamas rocket attacks in the weeks and months that followed, which killed innocent Israeli women and children?
He claimed that Israel's security barrier was designed to seize land, when in fact it was proposed by liberal and left-wing Israelis to protect civilians from bombings and sniper fire.
And Carter's omissions speak volumes. Not once in his speech did he mention the Palestinian refugee problem, which the Arab states still exploit against Israel. And not once did he mention Iran and the nuclear threat it poses - not just to Israel, but to the entire world. UPDATE (15 Apr 07): Amazing! Israelis are free to say this on Israeli TV, while Israel and AIPAC are treated like sacred cows over here. I guess it's because we're a bunch of dumb and pious goyim, always afraid to step out of line. Ever notice how all the MSM pundits bark together like a pack of dogs? Oh sure, trivial differences involving scandals and other convenient distractions...
Back to Israel Lobby
Espionage Cases
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Resources
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's article on the Israel Lobby appeared The truth is that many new facts are in this book, and many surprising facts. By reconstructing a trail of meetings and public statements in 2001-2002, for example, the authors show that much of the leadership of Israel was puzzled at first by the boyish enthusiasm for a war on Iraq among their neoconservative allies. Why Iraq? they asked. Why now? They would appear to have obtained assurances, however, that once the 'regime change' in Iraq was accomplished, the next war would be against Iran.
A notable pilgrimage followed. Back to Israel Lobby
US Support for Israel
Back to Israel Menu
Introduction (21 Jul 06): A curious phenomenon seems to be happening in America. Criticism of Israel appears to be increasing, on both the left and the right. (In Europe, the situation is far worse.) For example, today FrontPageMag blasts Pat Buchanan and other 'Lew Rockwell paleoconservatives' for criticizing Israel's recent attack on Lebanon, as well as US support for this attack, following Hezbollah's brazen initiation of hostilities. (I comment further on this below.) On the left, and especially the far left, criticism of Israel and support for the Palestinians has been swelling for some time. And I was a bit taken aback to read this article by Richard Cohen, a seemingly reasonable moderate liberal with the Washington Post, who called Israel an 'honest mistake'.
I am very sympathetic to Israel and mostly blame the Arabs for the mess over there. However, I reject any attempts of pro-Israel conservatives or others to shut down the debate. More importantly, the rising criticism of Israel may be an ominous harbinger of a sea-change in US-Israel relations, much to the detriment of the latter. So it is worth documenting, and I have opened this new section. (See also my section of the so-called Jewish Lobby.)
UPDATE (15 October 07): Again, for completeness, I repeat that I remain sympathetic to Israel but have become critical of the occupation and settlements, and of the cowardice of our politicians in addressing these issues honestly.
Back to US Support for Israel
Paleoconservative Pat (21 Jul 06): FrontPageMag smacks Pat!
Orion News Blog: On the Birth of Modern Israel
Mort Zuckerman: A Wise Change in Plans (on Hamas)
Pat Buchanan: The Persecution of the Palestinians
Srdja Trifkovic: Olmert, Abbas, and Prospects for Peace
Daniel Pipes: What Jewish Ties to Jerusalem?
Michael Oren: Israel Should Resume Targeted Killing
Dershowitz Rebukes Carter
Richard Cohen Calls Israel a Mistake
Relevance of Jihad
The New Historians
Tony Karon's View
Other Articles
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO JIMMY CARTER
Alan Dershowitz, Huffington Post, 22 Nov 06
I don't know why Jimmy Carter, who is generally a careful man, allowed so many errors and omissions to blemish his book. Here are simply a few of the most egregious.
Carter emphasizes that 'Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times', but he ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem, and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.
Carter repeatedly claims that the Palestinians have long supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it. Yet he makes no mention of the fact that in 1938 the Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution with Israel receiving a mere sliver of its ancient homeland and the Palestinians receiving the bulk of the land. The Jews accepted and the Palestinians rejected this proposal, because Arab leaders cared more about there being no Jewish state on Muslim holy land than about having a Palestinian state of their own.
He barely mentions Israel's acceptance, and the Palestinian rejection, of the U.N.'s division of the mandate in 1948.
He claims that in 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against Jordan. The fact is that Jordan attacked Israel first, Israel tried desperately to persuade Jordan to remain out of the war, and Israel counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing missiles into the center of the city. Only then did Israel capture the West Bank, which it was willing to return in exchange for peace and recognition from Jordan.
Carter repeatedly mentions Security Council Resolution 242, which called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition and secure boundaries, but he ignores the fact that Israel accepted and all the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected this resolution. The Arabs met in Khartum and issued their three famous 'no's': 'No peace, no recognition, no negotiation' but you wouldn't know that from reading the history according to Carter.
Carter blames Israel, and exonerates Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal to accept statehood on 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza pursuant to the Clinton-Barak offers of Camp David and Taba in 2000-2001. He accepts the Palestinian revisionist history, rejects the eye-witness accounts of President Clinton and Dennis Ross and ignores Saudi Prince Bandar's accusation that Arafat's rejection of the proposal was 'a crime' and that Arafat's account 'was not truthful' — except, apparently, to Carter. The fact that Carter chooses to believe Yasir Arafat over Bill Clinton speaks volumes.
Carter's description of the recent Lebanon war is misleading. He begins by asserting that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. 'Captured' suggest a military apprehension subject to the usual prisoner of war status. The soldiers were kidnapped, and have not been heard from — not even a sign of life. The rocket attacks that preceded Israel's invasion are largely ignored, as is the fact that Hezbollah fired its rockets from civilian population centers.
NOTE: I once wrote a long article on the birth of modern Israel, based on online research. (As I said above, my views have changed since then.)
Martin Kramer: Is Zionism Colonialism? The Root Lie
David Horowitz: What Really Happened
Masada2000: DIRT List: Dense anti-Israel Repugnant Traitors
FrontPageMag: Jimmy Carter's war against the Jews
Jews for Justice: The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
WRMEA: FAQs regarding Camp David and Barak's Generous Offer
See also here.
Arabs only came to the Land of Israel in large numbers after the Jews returned in the 20th century and started to rebuild the nation, thereby creating economic and employment opportunities for Arab immigrants.
Andrew Bostom: Understanding the Jihad to Destroy Israel
Andrew Bostom: Islamic Jew Hatred & Jihad
NOTE (14 Oct 07): I have subsequently realized that this was rather naive on my part! I am now studying the problem with an open mind. Also, regarding the following, it is too simple to put all the blame on the Arabs, as the Israeli settlements and occupation of the West Bank are a major part of the problem. Also, I was wrong to dismiss Finkelstein, simply because he seemed combative in video. His book Beyond Chutzpah look quite scholarly to me, and his voice deserves to be heard. It is right-wing Zionist propaganda that tries to demonize him. Remember that I keep these old articles intact to chart the change in my thinking as I become better informed. This constitutes proof that an average American can be liberated from the bonds of ignorance and propaganda!
Ilan Pappe: The History of Israel Reconsidered
FrontPageMag: Ilan Pappe: Israel's Howard Zinn
Jews for Justice: The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
WRMEA: FAQs regarding Camp David and Barak's Generous Offer
Baruch Kimmerling: Review of How Israel Lost by Richard Ben Cramer
Ricki Hollander: Review of How Israel Lost by Richard Ben Cramer
Joel Beinin: Benny Morris and the Road Back from Liberal Zionism
Joel Beinin: Is Terrorism a Useful Term?
Middle East Forum: Articles by Efraim Karsh
Efraim Karsh: What Occupied Territories?
Efraim Karsh: Fabricating Israeli History: The 'New Historians' (book)
Daniel Mandel: Efraim Karsh dissents from the new orthodoxies
HARVARD HUCKSTERS HYPE ISRAELI PSEUDO-HISTORIANS
Ilana Mercer, 24 Mar 06
For, as an incredulous Karsh discovered, 'Morris not only fails to show rewriting by [the Israeli founding fathers], but he himself is the one who systematically falsifies evidence.'
Democracy Now: Dershowitz vs. Finkelstein Debate
Frank Menetrez: Dershowitz vs. Finkelstein: Who's Right?
Alan Dershowitz: List of Finkelstein Lies
Alan Dershowitz: A Case Study in Hate and Intimidation
Alan Dershowitz: To Kill an Alan Dershowitz
Alan Dershowitz: Chomsky and Goodman lie about me
Alan Dershowitz: Norman Finkelstein's Obscenities
Norman Finkelstein: Should Dershowitz Target Himself ...?
Norman Finkelstein: MEMRI Nazis smear me as a holocaust denier
Joe Wiener: Dershowitz tries to stop Finkelstein's book
Norman Finkelstein vs. Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami
Democracy Now: Holocaust and Israel scholars praise Finkelstein
Alan M. Dershowitz: Radical Reverse Psychology
Don Atapattu: The Tragedy of Alan Dershowitz
HOW THE 1967 WAR DOOMED ISRAEL
Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, 3 Jun 07
The war of 1967 was a continuation of the war of 1948, a battle over sovereignty, ownership and possession of the land in what had been British-Mandate Palestine.
Avraham Burg: The End of Zionism
Chris Hedges: Looking Back on 40 Years of Occupation
Tony Karon: Many Jews Are Questioning Israel
MERIP: Palestine for Beginners
Jews for Justice: The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
HEART: Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
Begin's Admission in 1982 That Israel Started Three of Its Wars
David Remnick: Why the Six-Day War is still being fought
Gabriel Kolko: Israel: Mythologizing a 20th Century Accident
Taki: The Victory that Wrecked Israel
Barry Lando: Israel's Primal Myth: A Barrier to Peace
WRMEA: FAQs regarding Camp David and Barak's Generous Offer
Arnaud de Borchgrave: Embarrassing History
'It is not the place to which they pray, is not once mentioned by name in prayers, and it is connected to no mundane events in Muhammad's life. The city never served as capital of a sovereign Muslim state, and it never became a cultural or scholarly center. Little of political import by Muslims was initiated there.'
Daniel Pipes: The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem
Daniel Pipes: What Jewish Ties to Jerusalem?
Introduction
Other Articles
Daniel Pipes: A PLO Leader: Oslo Accords Led to Palestinian Violence
BESA Bulletin: On Arafat's War by Efraim Karsh
Aluf Benn: The Dove Awakens (on the Geneva Accord)
Norman Finkelstein: Review of Dennis Ross' The Missing Peace
US ARAB & JEWS SHARE PEACE GOALS
Jim Lobe, Antiwar, 5 Jun 06
The poll also found strong majorities — 63 percent of Jewish Americans and 77 percent of Arab Americans — in favor of a freeze on Jewish settlement activity in the occupied territories and similar levels of support for the revived 2002 Arab League peace plan that would normalize ties with Israel in return for land it conquered in the 1967 war.
Century Foundation: New Poll of Arab and Jewish Americans
Introduction
A Book on Israel's Wall
Google Search on Israel's Wall
Is the Wall Grabbing Land?
Other Articles
'Terrorists can also go over a fence in gliders, around it in boats, or under it in tunnels. They can ignore it by firing mortars or rockets. They can pass through checkpoints using false identification papers. They can recruit Israeli Arabs or Western sympathizers.'
In 2001, he offered some more pro-active methods for dealing with terrorists:
Bury suicide bombers in potter's fields rather than deliver their bodies to relatives (who turn their funerals into frenzied demonstrations). Freeze the financial assets of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, the PLO, and the PA.
Prevent PA officials (including Arafat) from returning to the PA.
Permit no transportation of people or goods beyond basic necessities.
Shut off utilities to the PA.
Then: implement the death penalty against murderers.
Seize weapons from the PA and make sure no new ones reach it.
Re-occupy areas from which gunfire or mortars are shot.
Raze the PA's illegal offices in Jerusalem, its security infrastructure and villages from which attacks are launched.
Capture or otherwise dispose of the PA leadership.
Destroy the PA.
Reach separate deals with each Palestinian town or village.
A DEFENSIBLE FENCE:
FIGHTING TERROR AND
ENABLING A TWO-STATE SOLUTION
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Free PDF for download
Here are the Policy Recommentations from the Executive Summary:
In light of these considerations, the United States should support construction of a West Bank fence that enhances Israeli security without foreclosing a future return to negotiations. Washington should also support vigorous, innovative measures to minimize the attendant hardships on the Palestinian people. Overall, the ongoing West Bank fence project must achieve the following objectives if it is to be politically defensible in Washington as well as in the eyes of local parties and the international community:
Avoid construction routes that preclude the formation of a contiguous Palestinian state or cause undue disruption to Palestinian lives,
Reduce violence by limiting the infiltration of terrorists into Israel,
End the deadlock on achieving a two-state solution,
Advance the debate in Israel regarding the future of settlements, and
Provide an incentive for Palestinians to both fight terrorism and return to the negotiating table.
It is amazing that the world will criticize Israel for everything, even an inert non-violent fence that keeps out suicide bombers.
Amnesty International: Place of the fence/wall in international law
Mohammed Khatib: Help us stop Israel's wall peacefully
Chris Hedges: Israel's Wall of Horrors
Ran HaCohen: The Apartheid Wall
Anne Gwynne: The Wound Which Has Slashed Palestine to the Bone
Ran HaCohen: The Apartheid Wall
Mearsheimer-Walt Paper
Mearsheimer Addresses CAIR
Wesley Clark in Crossfire
Jimmy Carter Speaks Out
Espionage Cases
Other Articles
The perfect test case came last month, when the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a political science professor at the University of Chicago jointly published a 'working paper' that parroted virtually every conspiracy theory ever articulated against Jews. Dean Walt and Professor Mearsheimer wrote that Jews control the media and the government; that we are loyal to Israel rather than to our 'host' country; and that we dupe non-Jews, against their best interests, into fighting and dying for our interest. All that was missing from the Walt-Mearsheimer screed was the 'blood libel': the medieval accusation that Jews use the blood of Christian children to make Passover matzo.
As I said, I have not read the paper, but I find it difficult to believe that experienced academics would be so foolish as to claim that Jews 'control' (or even influence) all the media or that they are trying to 'dupe' the dumb Goyim into dying for Israel. If these two authors were at all sensible, they would have claimed that there is a powerful pro-Israel lobby, that it contains a variety of views from the hawkish to the dovish, and that there is too much reticence in discussing this lobby, based on fears of being smeared as anti-Semitic. I believe all of this is true, even the last point. (Note that reticence in discussing this multi-faceted lobby is not fundamentally different from the typical American pundit inhibitions about discussing the power of corporate America over the political process, for fear of being accused of stirring up 'class warfare'. Many of our pundits are too timid, to put it mildly. Or maybe they care only about their careers.)
Mearsheimer and Walt: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
Mearsheimer and Walt: The Israel Lobby (Chapter I)
LRB: Mearsheimer & Walt: The Israel Lobby
LRB: Dershowitz letter on M-W paper
LRB: M&W's reply to Dershowitz' letter
LRB: YouTube video: Mearsheimer, Ben-Ami, Indyk, Judt, Khalidi, Ross
LRB: YouTube video: A Dutch documentary on AIPAC
Mearsheimer & Walt: Breaking the Tabboo
Alan Dershowitz: On the Mearsheimer-Walt Israel lobby paper
NY Sun: Harvard's Paper on Israel Drew From Neo-Nazi Sites
Eliot A. Cohen: Yes, It's Anti-Semitic
Michael Massing: The Storm over the Israel Lobby [more]
Tony Karon: Mearsheimer, Walt and David Remnick
Simes, Kemp et al: Reviews of Mearsheimer & Walt book
NPR: Author Stephen Walt takes on 'The Israel Lobby' (audio)
NPR: Anti-Defamation League takes on Stephen Walt (audio)
Ron Rosenbaum: The Israel Lobby and the Second Holocaust Debate
Leslie Gelb: Where Mearsheimer and Walt Went Wrong
Milton Viorst: On 'The Israel Lobby'
Doug Bandow: Review of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
Scott McConnell: The Lobby Strikes Back
Alan Dershowitz: The Lobby, Jews, and Anti-Semites
Christopher Hitchens: Overstating Jewish Power
Martin Kramer: A Powerful Lobby
Al-Hayat: The (Jewish) Lobby Steps Up its Activity
Justin Raimondo: Smear and Fear is how Israel's lobby operates
Justin Raimondo: Senator Hollings Is Right
Tony Judt: A Lobby, Not A Conspiracy
Michael Massing: The Israel Lobby
Middle East Now: US Support for Israel is Growing
Dana Milbank: Pronouncing Blame on the Israel Lobby
Philip Weiss: Ferment Over 'The Israel Lobby'
Daniel Pipes: CAIR and CFR endorse Mearsheimer/Walt
Michael Costello: No delusions regarding the Middle East
Noam Chomsky: The Israel Lobby?
WWIV Report: Pappe refutes Chomsky on Israel Lobby
James Petras: Noam Chomsky and the Pro-Israel Lobby
James Petras vs. Norman Finkelstein on the pro-Israel lobby
Jerry Kroth: Whatever AIPAC Wants, AIPAC Gets
Khody Akhavi: Outing the 'Israel Lobby'
Ray McGovern: So Who's Afraid of the Israel Lobby?
Uri Avnery: The Power of the Israel Lobby
Daniel Levy: OK, here we go, the Israel Lobby
Daniel Lazare: Lobbying Degree Zero
Stephen Zunes: The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really?
Stephen Zunes: The Israel Lobby Revisited
Rabbi Lerner: The Israel Lobby and Congressman Moran
GEN. WESLEY CLARK CAUGHT IN CROSSFIRE
OF JEWISH-AMERICAN POLITICS
Matthew Yglesias, American Prospect, 23 Jan 07
According to Huffington's January 4 recounting of Clark's thoughts, he said this: 'You just have to read what's in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office seekers.'
JIMMY CARTER: LIES REGARDING ISRAEL
David Horowitz, FrontPageMag, 14 Dec 06
It is a lie that Palestinians 'had their own land, first of all, occupied'. This is like saying that Texans had their own land occupied by Hispanics, ignoring the fact that Hispanics were there first. The very word Palestine is a Roman appellation for the people called Philistines, who were not Arabs but red-haired sailors from the Aegean. The Jews were there as well. In short, first of all the Jews were in the land before the Arabs.
Jefferson Morley: Jimmy Carter, Palestinian Sympathizer
Chris Hedges: Israel Lobby: 'Get Carter'
Mondo Weiss: Carter can't say what Jews are free to say
ISRAELI ACTIONS NO BETTER THAN APARTHEID
Yoram Kaniuk, YNet News, 25 Dec 06
Ever since the days of Mofaz as army chief and defense minister, the order is to abuse, kill, humiliate. The roadblocks are not between the Palestinians and Israel, but rather, aimed at making their life difficult. A 15-year-old boy was arrested and held in custody for several months without trial. After that, they just released him. Left him without a penny in his pocket near a roadblock in the middle of the night. Officers are serving as judges and they create gross injustice.
DEBATING JIMMY CARTER
Alan Dershowitz, NY Daily News, 28 Jan 07
President Carter and I agree on many things. We both want a two-state solution to the conflict. We both want an end to the occupation. We both oppose new Israeli settlements. We both wish to see a democratic, viable Palestinian state emerge.
Joshua Scheer: Stanley Sheinbaum: Carter's 'Apartheid' Mistake
Jewish Journal: Stanley Sheinbaum: Father of the Leftist Guard
Paul Craig Roberts: Jimmy Carter Speaks Truth to Propaganda
Jimmy Carter: Taking on The Pro-Israel Lobby
Paul Findley: Carter enters lions' den
Alan Dershowitz: The Real Jimmy Carter
Wikipedia: AIPAC Espionage Scandal
CI Centre: Larry Franklin Case
Haaretz: U.S. to indict two senior AIPAC officials under Espionage Act
Dana Milbank: AIPAC's Big, Bigger, Biggest Moment
Bidisha Banerjee: American Israeli spies?
Robert Dreyfuss: Bigger than AIPAC
Jewish Week: Indictment of ex-AIPAC staffers triggers anxiety
WP: U.S. Indicts 2 in Case Of Divulged Secrets
Doug Ireland: Real AIPAC Spy Story is about Iran
NYT: Pentagon Analyst Gets 12 Years for Disclosing Data
Michael Scheuer: Israel Conducts Covert Actions in America
NY Sun: Judge in Israel Lobbyists' Trial Told Evidence 'Overwhelming'
Jewish Daily Forward: FBI Affair Costs Lobby Dynamic Director Rosen
Grant F. Smith: Is the Media Sabotaging the AIPAC Spy Trial?
Justin Raimondo: AIPAC on trial
Justin Raimondo: The Lobby on Trial
Justin Raimondo: Has the AIPAC spy trial been derailed?
Stephen Zunes: 10 Things about U.S. Policy in the Middle East
Michael Massing: The Israel Lobby
Eric Alterman: List of unflinching Israel supporters in the media
Justin Raimondo: Israel's Amen Corner
Ray McGovern: Rude Questions and the Immutable Object
Robert Dreyfuss: Agents of Influence
Joe Wiener: Dershowitz tries to stop Finkelstein's book
Michael Carmichael: The DLC and Israel
Michael Massing: The Storm over the Israel Lobby
Karen Kwiatkowski: Israel Makes Its 'Clean Break'
Nathan Guttman: Book: Israel, Lobby Pushing Iran War
Right Web: American Israel Public Affairs Committee
Gideon Rachman: Israelis, America and Iran
M.J. Rosenberg: AJC report goes after liberal anti-semites
Gallup Poll: 77% of American Jews oppose the Iraq war
Poll: U.S. Jews Oppose Iraq War, Anti-Terror Efforts
Nathan Guttman: Groups Mum On Iraq, Despite Antiwar Tide
Nathan Guttman: Soros attacks Pro-Israel lobby
George Soros: On Israel, America and AIPAC
The Forward: Soros and Media Heavyweights Attack AIPAC
Gary Kamiya: Can American Jews unplug the Israel lobby?
Nicholas Beaudrot: Holds breath and discusses AIPAC
American Footprints: Not quite the lobby of the Grand Hotel
Matthew Yglesias: The Right Enemies [more]
Scott McConnell: Bloggers vs. the Lobby
Justin Raimondo: Iraq, Iran, and the Lobby
Gaby Wood: The new Jewish question
Justin Raimondo: WSJ and AIPAC spies
Reuters: Soros adds voice to debate over Israel lobby
John Walsh: Why is the Peace Movement Silent About AIPAC?
Justin Raimondo: Remember the Liberty!
Charley Reese: Cracks in Zionism
Donald Meissner: Michael Scheuer on the Jewish Lobby
Paul Craig Roberts: US-Israel Policy Harms Both Countries
ISRAEL LOBBY MIGHT GET ITS WAR
David Bromwich, Huffington Post, 5 Sep 07
When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's article on the Israel Lobby appeared in the London Review of Books, after having been commissioned and killed by the Atlantic Monthly, neoconservative publicists launched an all-out campaign to slander the authors as anti-Semites. Now that their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy has appeared — a work of considerable scope, carefully documented, and not just an expanded version of the article — the imputation of anti-Semitism will doubtless be repeated more sparingly for readers lower down the educational ladder. Meanwhile, the literate establishment press will (a) ignore it, (b) pretend that it says nothing new or surprising, and (c) rule out the probable inferences from the data, on the ground that the very meaning of the word 'lobby' is elusive.
NPR: Author Stephen Walt takes on 'The Israel Lobby' (audio)
NPR: Anti-Defamation League takes on Stephen Walt (audio)
Khody Akhavi: Outing the 'Israel Lobby'
Muzzlewatch: Dershowitz tells Brzezinski to dump Obama
WP: Rep. Moran Upsets Jewish Groups Again
Tikhun: Interview with Jim Moran
Grant F. Smith: Where Did AIPAC Come From?
Michael Kinsley: AIPAC is Anti-Semitic!
Newshour: Dueling Books Reignite Debate Over Israeli Lobby
Philip Weiss: The Israel Lobby Targets Haaretz
Jon Basil Utley: It's Not Only the Israel Lobby
Diana Johnstone: BHL and the Zombie Left
Alan Dershowitz: Justifying the neocon view (video)
John Pilger: Palestine Is Still The Issue (video)
Akiva Eldar on Israel, the Mideast and the Lobby
Scott McConnell: The Lobby Strikes Back
Justin Raimondo: The Israel Lobby and the War Party
Eric Alterman: 'Bad for the Jews'
Introduction
Paleoconservative Pat
Israel and the 'Indecent Left'
Leave Juan Williams Alone!
Caroline Glick on Western Appeasement
Other Articles
Pat Buchanan: No, this is not 'our war'
FrontPageMag: The Protocols of Pat Buchanan
Richard Cohen: Hunker Down With History
Since the outbreak of the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict, Pat Buchanan and other paleoconservatives have made themselves true exponents of popu