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Israel’s Egypt Conundrum
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Report From an ‘Asymmetrical’ War
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A Further Perspective
Newt’s Bold Words on the Palestinians
Truer words have never been spoken — so why did his spokesman back away from them?
The Palestinians have hit a rough patch lately. Their unilateral-statehood bid at the UN has collapsed. The United States firmly opposed it, and even European powers on the Security Council were lukewarm. Both the U.S. Congress and Israel — albeit temporarily — have held up funding to the Palestinian Authority in protest of its antics.
The Europeans, traditionally the Palestinians’ most avid backers, are now so immersed in their own economic problems that the psychological and ideological élan of Palestinian empowerment may have weakened. Meanwhile, violent upheaval has beset Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and other Arab countries — none of it impelled in any way by the Palestinian issue. To continue claiming that this issue is the crux of the region’s severe troubles — even that it’s the reason Iran is building nukes — has been exposed as starkly delusional. The fact that the Obama administration — as indicated by recent statements by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta — still clings to the fantasy is one of the reasons defeating it in the 2012 elections is an imperative.
Speaking of which, Republican candidate Newt Gingrich has now made waves by calling the Palestinians an “invented” people. He said as well that “it’s delusional to call it a peace process” and that both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas “represent an enormous desire to destroy Israel.” And, further:
Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools. They have textbooks that say “if there are 13 Jews and 9 Jews are killed, how many Jews are left?” We pay for those textbooks through our aid money. Time for somebody to say enough lying about the Middle East.
Gingrich’s spokesman R.C. Hammond, however, said that “Gingrich supports a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which will necessarily include agreement between Israel and the Palestinians over the borders of a Palestinian state.”
It seemed a strange brew to speak of a negotiated peace leading to statehood for an “invented,” “terrorist” people out to destroy Israel. Is there any way to disentangle this?
One way could be not to put too much emphasis on the “invented” notion. As Gingrich explained: “Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire.” The “Palestinian people,” he said, “are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community.”
All of which is true enough; while it is also true that there are Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza, in cynically sustained “refugee camps” in Syria and Lebanon, and in Jordan — some in “camps,” some outside of them — who are called Palestinians because it’s the most politically and demographically accurate term for them. Something that has been invented — even cynically invented — can exist.
More to the point is whether Gingrich’s words on the Palestinians’ goals and nature are accurate. As for Hamas, an “enormous desire to destroy Israel” is undeniable. Its charter says that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it,” and much else in the same vein. In recent days Israelis have endured yet another rocket barrage from Hamas-run Gaza.
And as for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, this latest video showing Israel as a loathsome, existentially abhorred scorpion is only one of a constant stream of such anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, often Nazi-style incitement flowing from the allegedly moderate entity. Its leader, Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, in his UN speech last September associated what he called the “Holy Land” with the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus while obliterating any Jewish connection. A poll last July of both West Bank and Gaza Palestinians found 73 percent favoring a genocidal anti-Jewish hadith.
Teaching terrorism in schools? It’s well documented, too.
Gingrich’s stark realism about the Palestinians, then, doesn’t jibe with his spokesman’s disclaimer. Gingrich has also pledged to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; as James Taranto points out, other presidential candidates (namely Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) have done the same without following through.
Still, even if one can’t know to what extent a President Gingrich would toe the line of candidate Gingrich, his tough language on the Palestinians is unprecedented for a presidential aspirant. At a time when the perverse Palestinian hold over the Western mind may finally be weakening, that’s all to the good.
About the Author
P. David Hornik is a writer and translator in Beersheva, Israel, blogging at PDavidHornik.typepad.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (25) | Leave a comment
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nathan| 12.12.11 @ 1:48PM
We can debate the rights and wrongs of the horrible Versaille "peace" treaty all we want. Again the famed Lawrence of Arabia spent the rest of his life seeking to undo the wrongs done to the people he fought with in the middle east at Paris. We can also question why at the end of WWI, the European powers moved in at all and carved up the middle east for their own ends, certainly not for the good of the people living there. Iraq, just one of many mistakes the British made, but hardly the only one, was created purely to exploit the oil there. But again, we can speculate what would have happened if the British and French had simple stayed out of the area all together, an area they had no real moral, ethical, or legal claim to, no claim other than right of conquest which is a military claim, not a moral or ethical one.
Newt the "historian" "intellectual" forgets too many things. Like with Hamas that the Israelis provided initial support and funding to the group believing that a religious group such as them would be a counter weight to the secular PLO.
We can call the Palestinians anything we want. First and foremost they are people, people with unalienable rights. It's hard defend the Irgun's attack on Deir Yassein and other villages where innocent women and children were directly targeted. We note that Ben Gurion never forthrightly condemned such attacks since it served Israel's interests. We also note that the Israelis would elect a member of that terrorist organization, Menachim Begim, as prime minister, raising serious issues about their credibility when it comes to complaining about terrorists.
As the occupying power on the west bank do the Israelis have the right, legal/moral/ethical to do Kelo VS New London against people who have not broken the law and have lived on lands for hundreds of years and give those lands to other private citizens? Can those actions be defended? The Palestinians, Arabs, PEOPLE if we will win cases against the government in Israeli courts only to have the government ignore the court. Is this the action of a proper democracy?
We are reminded of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon where the IDF surrounded the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps. The Phalangist militia wanted access to look for the killer of one of their leaders. Ariel Sharon said they could go in. For nearly a day the militia carried out a massacre that left hundreds if not thousands of innocent women and children dead while the IDF looked on and did nothing. There are credible stories of women and children trying to escape and the IDF pushing them back in to be killed.
Sharon, clearly responsible for all those deaths, a death toll that may well exceed the total number of Israelis killed by all terrorists attacks over the last 2o years, was later elected prime minister making him the second such person to be elected to the highest office.
Innocent people, call them what we will, have rights and the Israelis, THE ONE TRUE DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST, as we so often are told, must respect those rights. Based on what we too often see on the west bank, based on the refugee camp massacres, they don't do it as often as they should.
The Founders told us not to engage in entangling alliances. This was clearly one of the reasons.
mzk1| 12.16.11 @ 4:27AM
This is factually incorrect.
No one is sure what happened at Deir Yassin, but there is evidence that it was simply a battle. At any rate, Arabs had been murdering Jews for decades (centuries, really). The study of Sabra and Shatilla showed that of the people killed, a very small fraction were women and children (about 10 out of over a hundred), those that would norally get hit by crossfire. (And remeber, these were Lebanese Christians doing the killing.) The total number was not thousands.
Meanwhile, the PA openly calls Israel "the enemy" and glorifies killing civilians, while Israel goes nuts to try to root out any Jew who might be trying to do likewise.
mzk1| 12.16.11 @ 4:27AM
An American jury found that Time slandered Sharon, but he lost because they couldn't prove malice (!).
Mazzuchelli| 12.12.11 @ 4:44PM
Interesting, if not objective, historical summary. I agree absolutely with the final paragraph. Defund the Palestinians. Defund any NGOs carrying their water. While we're at it, defund the Saudis. On the other hand, Israel remains the sole buffer between the West and Iran's continued pursuit of armageddon.
And, do you see the irony? There is no Jesus, no Muhammad and no armageddon for that matter without the Tanakh. For that reason alone, the arabs should be abandoned and left to the devices of the Chinese and the Russians. They all deserve each other.
C Smith| 12.13.11 @ 10:10AM
vvv
C Smith| 12.13.11 @ 10:17AM
Friday, May 20, 2011
Obama's Green Light for Genocide
Do not pretend to know the thoughts and intents of our President's heart, but after his Thursday Mideast outline for "peace," it became painfully obvious that the plan as imposed would facilitate a Post-WW2 genocide.
Discounting the ceding the fertile West Bank to Arabs and the Negev to Jews, the abandonment of the Hebron graves of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and most unthinkable, the "forgetting" of Jerusalem, Obama's proposed Palestinian State would literally cut the heart and soul from Israel, and as Netanyahu more strategically assessed, leave her an "indefensible" "nine mile" corridor. Obama was not the first president to "befriend" Jews:
"At the French resort of Evian on the shores of Lake Geneva in the summer of 1938, President Roosevelt initiated a nine-day international conference, supposedly to facilitate Jewish immigration from Germany and Austria.
Very important people were here and all the delegates had a nice time. They took pleasure cruises on the lake. They gambled at night at the casino. They took mineral baths and massages…some of them took the excursions to Chamonix to go summer skiing. Some went riding, some played golf. Meetings. Yes, some attended the meetings. But, of course it is difficult to sit indoors hearing speeches when all the pleasures that Evian offers are waiting right outside" (Rene Richier as quoted in Peggy Mann, When the World Passed by on the Other Side, Manchester Guardian Weekly, 7 May 1938).
Here are the recollections of an uninvited delegate, Golda Meir, former Prime Minister of Israel:
"… sitting there in that magnificent hall and listening to the delegates of thirty-two countries rise, each in turn, to explain how much they would have liked to take in substantial numbers of refugees and how unfortunate it was that they were not able to do so, was a terrible experience, I don't think that anyone who didn't live through it can understand what I felt at Evian – a mixture of sorrow, rage, frustration and horror" (As quoted in, The Evian Conference - Hitler's Green Light for Genocide, Annette Shaw, 2001, Quoted by permission of Stephen D. Smith, Director, Beth Shalom, (Letter 15/3/2000), Perspective, Vol. 1, Issue 1, July 1998, "Nobody Wants Them,” p. 21).
"At the end of the nine-day conference, Hitler had his Green Light" (Annette Shaw, The Evian Conference - Hitler's Green Light for Genocide, 2001):
"Nobody wants them' claimed the German newspaper Völkischer Beobachter after the Evian Conference in July 1938 and Hitler gloated, saying, 'It is a shameful spectacle to see how the whole democratic world is oozing sympathy for the poor tormented Jewish people, but remains hard hearted and obdurate when it comes to helping them." (Perspective, Beth Shalom, p. 21).
After Obama's Thursday Mideast outline for "peace," it became painfully obvious that the plan as imposed would give, Fatah, Hamas, and the Arab League a "Green Light for Genocide."
http://theisraelofgod.blogspot.....ocide.html
nathan| 12.13.11 @ 11:05AM
I will challenge anyone and I mean anyone to go back to the 30's, 38 included and say that anyone living at that time accurately predicted Auschwitz and the rest of it. Too much of what is written by C Smith and others is done with the benefit of hindsight. Read the survivor accounts of the Holocaust (I have several shelves full of them in my library). One theme that runs throughout is that no one really saw it coming. Germany was the "civilized" country in Europe. Ignore for a moment that Martin Luther had been frightfully anti-semitic. Germany with all it's great art, Bach, all of it, no one considered them capable of what was coming. Yitzhak Zuckerman, second in command of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising wrote in his book "A Surplus Of Memory" that like most all the Holocaust victims he didn't see it coming either. By the time he and the others understood what was going on, 350,000 Jews had been deported from Warsaw to Treblinka and it was much much too late.
We can do whatever lessons learned we want from that horrible period in our collective history. Certainly disarming people is a prescription for disaster. We saw that recently in Rwanda.
But we also see that we cannot ever allow any government for any reason to violate fundamental principles in the name of "good intentions". Hitler and the nazis acted as they did with at least the tacit support of the people at least in part by saying the Jews represented a mortal threat to Germany. That "something" had to be done to deal with that threat. And if that meant dispensing with fundamental freedoms and liberties to "save the country" so be it. And it started slow with attacks on groups everyone hated like the communists and then progressively moved forward as no one raised any serious opposition.
We see some of that in this country today. We see too much of "Constitution be damned" if that's what it takes to "save American lives". No. We saw where that went 70 years ago in Europe. Franklin was right, you cannot sacrifice essential liberties for a little safety. Paine was right, in order to secure your own freedoms you must defend the rights of those y0u hate. Today the threat comes as much from the so called right with McCain and Graham attempting to legislate the Fifth Amendment out of the Constitution in the name of "saving the country". Again, 70 years ago we saw where that kind of mentality ended up, where crossing those lines led to. Let's not make those same mistakes.
TrueBlue| 12.13.11 @ 1:21PM
Not to be rude, but nobody saw it coming because they didn't want to believe what was happening is what was actually happening. The slow reduction in rights, people disappearing into the night, etc went on for quite awhile before the camps were started up. I agree that that is definitely something we need to be wary of these days. People complain, but nobody does anything. They keep sending the same politicians that voted the laws into place back to DC, nobody in Congress is reining in the TSA (nevermind that ANY search and seizure by the government requires an individual warrant for each person and not this overarching rule they use). Any elected official that isn't AT LEAST raising concerns over this needs to be booted out when they come up for reelection.
People should be wary of any gun registration laws too, it may seem like a good idea for law enforcement, but remember it also tells the government who has guns period. It may seem somewhat paranoid, but if you think Germany didn't do the same thing when it came to making prospective troublemakers disappear into the night you're fooling yourselves. They already have current and veteran military members on their list of potential terrorists.
KyMouse| 12.13.11 @ 3:43PM
An elderly man once told me that the reason he hadn't believed what people were saying about Nazi atrocities was that during WWI, people said that Germans were eating babies.
He said that he and his family figured that the WWII accounts of atrocities were the same kind of thing--propaganda -- until they saw the photos of bodies in the camps.
loulou| 12.13.11 @ 1:59PM
Lion Feuchtwanger predicted it, you illiterate.
PolishKnight| 12.13.11 @ 3:01PM
Most American Jews see no problem with similar language being used against white, Christian males for the goal of an "affirmative action" or "state interest" even when they proclaim in an Orwellian manner that such racism and sexism doesn't violate laws against race or gender discrimination.
It's truly weird to live in a culture where white males either openly hate themselves and blame themselves for all the problems in the world while worshiping Sweden as the ideal culture of humanity and the rest don't do, say, or even think about the craziness of the era we live in.
mzk1| 12.16.11 @ 4:40AM
Actualy, Jews have long been against quotes. The very term quota is taken from policies used by Protestants in the US and Catholics/Orthodox Christians in Europe used to discriminate against Jews. This is one of the main reasons for the Black/Jewish split.
mzk1| 12.16.11 @ 4:40AM
quotas
Mender| 12.13.11 @ 12:08PM
I despair. As a half-Jewish man, Israel and its advocates seem to be a bad joke, a cunning attempt by Jewish people, founded after the greatest crime in history, to prove that we can be as nasty as any other ethnic group when it’s us in the majority for a change. (Yes, I know it also proves that Muslim minorities with the help of nearby governments can be barbarous and short-sighted too.)
As for this historically laughable claim, let’s try this (admittedly emotive) example. Let’s say that a foreign group who lived in California 1900 years ago (who we’ll call ‘Russia’) invade and take over California, and a supportive foreign superpower (who we’ll call ‘China’) argue that because everyone in California is actually ‘American’ it’s nonsense to talk about 'Californians' or a ‘Californian right of return’: hasn’t the President of America himself said that all Americans are one people? And that this new area is democratic, a ‘crucial regional ally’ and it deserves Chinese support-look at how those crazy American Christians keep foaming at the mouth and waving guns when they talk about it!
TrueBlue| 12.13.11 @ 1:32PM
Ah, but the Jews were actually living in that territory prior to WWII, they had actually turned it into a productive region again after hundreds of years as a near wasteland, they were pushed out by a German supported Jordanian king who saw the wealth they had accumulated in the territory and wanted it for himself. That is why they were given the territory to "return" to after the war, that little 9 mile across strip of land that it was in the beginning. Israel expanded after the Six-day War and took territory after they were attacked (a defensive action, which until very recently was an acknowledged legal reason in international law to retain territory after a war), they even gave the majority of it back. It is the rest of the Arab countries in the region that have refused to allow the Palestinian people citizenship or to live anywhere but in refugee camps that have caused the problems there. Especially since those same nations were the ones that told the Palestinians to leave before they marched in with their troops to attack Israel.
You can point at all the atrocities that Israel has committed since then if you want, but when dealing with a group of fanatics the only way to get them to stop is to make it clear they cannot win no matter how hard they try. It may sound cold, but that's reality. Israel tried peace, it didn't work, and will never work in that region. 'Might Makes Right' is the mindset of mainstream Muslim culture, the so-called moderates who live here in the US are actually the unusual element, not the other way around like the MSM keeps trying to claim.
mzk1| 12.16.11 @ 4:41AM
The "atrocities Israel has commited" did not exist.
mzk1| 12.16.11 @ 4:32AM
Almost all of the Jews of the Middle East, who had been there for hundereds (and in some cases, thousands of years), live in Israel. This is about 40% of the Jewish population, except that marriage between them and the European Jews is so high that they soon will not form a definite group.
This to me is the main justificatin for Israel; the Jews of the Middle East needa place to live where they cannot be raped, murdered, despoiled, ec. by any Muslim who takes it into his "heart" to do so, as happened whe nthey live in Arab countries, from many of which they were expelled with the clothes on their backs.
Au Contraire| 12.13.11 @ 1:27PM
Setting aside my opinions on the larger issue here, the first thing that occurs to me is that Newt is a lousy historian. A good social scientist (or even just someone who uses logic effectively) knows that every nationality is "invented."
Paul Schneider| 12.15.11 @ 5:20PM
I can't add anthing that has not been covered by "nathan" quite well, except this overview of the territory from a historical perspective going back to pre-Roman times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine
mzk1| 12.16.11 @ 4:33AM
Except that what Nathan says is factually incorrect. As for Wikipedia, as someone who edits it (yes, anyone can) I would take it with a grain of salt.
Freedomist | 12.15.11 @ 8:04PM
If you go back in history far enough, you'll discover that every national people were "invented". Before Europeans came to America, there were no "Americans". Pre-European people in America did not call themselves Americans. The origins of a national people are irrelevant when it comes to aspirations and justice. The Israelis, by refusing to stop building "Jewish only" settlements and roads outside Israel proper, make a mockery of the peace process.
mzk1| 12.16.11 @ 4:37AM
As opposed to the "Arab only" Arabs settlements that fill the area? There were Jews there before, in Jenin (ran away in fear), Hebron (ran away after many were massacred), Kibbutz Etzyon (men killed by Arab troops, possibly after surrendering) ; why should they still not have the right? It's called "Judea" fo a reason.
mzk1| 12.16.11 @ 4:20AM
It is interesting that you agree with Nathan, because his statements are factually incorrect.
Newt's, on the other hand, are a simpe statement of historical facts.
As a Wikipedia editor myself, I woud take it with a grain of salt on controvertial issues.
mzk1| 12.16.11 @ 4:42AM
I do not understand the criticisms of Newt for stating simple historical facts.
Allen Johnson| 12.18.11 @ 10:05PM
To be fair and balanced, Israel is an invented nation. Yes, invented in the sense of a nation-state, and for the most part, the people who immigrated there to settle it. Second, a certain number, not small, of Israeli Jewish settlers are quite violent toward Palestinians. I have personally witnessed that. As for the argument that Palestinians are a politically made up term for Arabs, let's just say that these people happened to be inhabitants in a certain land for several generations even though they were not a nation state. And remember, nation-states are a fairly recent historical phenomenon. In closing, Hornik is simply spouting the same rhetoric of fear that seems to be effective in gaining sympathy for poor beleaguered Israel, even as that nation continues to confiscate Palestinian (or, er, Arab) property, exercise apartheid-like unequal laws in the occupied territories such as separate roads and very unequal distribution of water, and ultimately to oppress that people. As for hate language, there is plenty of hate language by the hilltop Jewish settlers, too.