"And what’s striking to me about Abbas’ statements is the way in which they kind of rehearse the very same kind of dehumanizing things that Jews say about Palestinians"
You might want to edit this line, Peter, so it isn't a broad statement about Jews in general. A less intellectually honest person might use this line to claim anti-Semitism on your part, because you're saying that Jews in general say dehumanizing things about Palestinians.
"Or similarly, when Mahmoud Abbas says, ‘well, the Jews brought their suffering on themselves,’ right? The reason they suffered so much in Europe was because they were doing these bad things like usury and money lending. Again, it’s quite similar to people who say, ‘well, if the Palestinians are suffering now, they’ve really just brought it on themselves. If they didn’t do all these bad things, then they wouldn’t be suffering under apartheid without basic rights,’ right?"
Palestinian governments and armed groups are actively and indisputably murdering Jews and launching terror attacks and have been for decades, with the widespread support of their people. The only way this analogy holds is if Jews in Europe were actually doing the "bad things" Abbas accuses them of. If Jews were literally using the blood of Christian babies to make matzah, and the Christians hated them for that, I don't think anyone would say it's anti-Semitic to make that point.
The difference is that Jews in Europe were not widespread purveyors of usury like Abbas says they were. The problem is the lie that explains the Holocaust, not just the explanation in and of itself. Lots of people look for reasons the Holocaust happened. They don't get accused of anti-Semitism except when they lie about things Jews did. Likewise, the things Palestinian terror groups are accused of are not lies. They don't even bother to deny the child murder, the rockets, etc.
For Israel, the Oslo Accords Were a Resounding Success
The creation of Palestinian enclaves is an internal Israeli compromise: making the Palestinians disappear without expelling them. In the meantime, Israel reaps great profits, in part by turning the West Bank and Gaza into a human laboratory
“Thanks to Oslo, Israel absolved itself of the occupier’s responsibility for the people and their welfare. And it kept the cream: control over land, water, the cellphone wavelengths, the maritime and air space, freedom of movement, the economy and borders (both external and of every pocket of territory).
Israel rakes in enormous profits from these levers of control, as it oversees a large human laboratory where it develops and tests its most profitable exports: arms, munitions and control-and surveillance technology. The Palestinians in this lab – deprived of authority and whose resources are shrinking – have been left with the responsibility of managing their problems and civilian affairs.
Western countries have absolved Israel of its financial duties as the occupying power and have financed much of the management, maintenance and limited development expenses of the Palestinian enclaves. The explanation is that this is necessary to establish a Palestinian state. But for years now, the Western countries have had enough of subsidizing the occupation and its problems, so they punish the Palestinians with tight-fistedness and warn of humanitarian disasters, while they sign generous economic, scientific and military agreements with Israel.”
You're right, it has nothing to do with Abbas or his Holocaust denying comments, so I don't see how it's relevant. Maybe you can explain the relevance, with your own thoughts this time, instead of the constant regurgitation of someone else's.
Amira Hass is truth telling about the facts on the ground in the West Bank.
Abbas is Israel’s subcontractor in the West Bank. Can you see the relevance?
Can you see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, about Israel’s brutal military occupation of the Palestinians?
I get it, you prefer to hear comments from someone thousands of miles from Palestine, rather than someone in the thick of it.
I would advise anyone who wants to know the facts on the ground in Palestine,to subscribe to the Israel newspaper, Haaretz, reading articles by Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and others.
This Is Palestine, a documentary video by Irishman John McColgan is worth a look.
If Abbas is Israel's subcontractor, the Palestinians should get him out of there and install a leader who actually represents them. You know, someone like Ismail Haniyeh.
Does Benjamin Netanyahu represent all Israelis? Or Donald Trump all Americans? Sometimes oppositional candidates with minority support come to power from maneuvering among political factions and fault lines or as an indictment of the status quo. You understand all this. West Bank Palestinians would probably prefer a trained circus ape over Abbas at this point, if given the choice.
Netanyahu represents the state of Israel and the Israeli nation, yes. Same with Trump when he was President, he represented the United States and the American people. Palestine is no exception to this.
Those who signed this letter are definitely not antisemitic, but most of them reject the concept of Jewish peoplehood (and they have endorsed Shlomo Sand’s nonsense). Just like Rivlin, they oppose racism, but they want exclusive sovereignty over the whole land (in a binational state, the majority calls the shorts, no matter what the constitution says).
There is one thing most Israelis and most Palestinians have in common (that includes Western leftists such as Peter Beinart of course): they lack the intellectual flexibility to understand that there can be such thing as a conflict between two legitimacies. The best way to overcome a clash of rights is to envision creative solutions (such as a confederation), not to opt for a simplistic understanding of history and reach no less simplistic conclusions (that Israeli Jews must make do with mere autonomy, while the Palestinians only are entitled to full-fledged self-determination).
From a universal values perspective (anti-Zionists love to talk about universal values, as long as only Palestinians can benefit from them), this conflict is a clash of rights. Since the late 1960s, Western leftists (including Jewish leftists who call for the dismantling of Israel) no longer understand why the creation of Israel was a necessity, as Jews are no longer in danger. But in the late 1940s, the world was still divided between countries that persecuted the Jews and those that refused to welcome them. It was impossible at the time to predict that their fate would improve so much in the second part of the 20th century. And those who claim that a Jewish state should have been established in Germany fail to understand that the Israeli pre-state society existed before the Holocaust. A binational too was not an option. This idea was shelved by Ben Gurion after the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1936, as even the most magnanimous Palestinian nationalist insisted on imposing caps on Jewish immigration, so as to make sure Jews never become the majority. If Peter Beinart believes that a Jewish state was wrong, the onus is on him to explain what Jews were supposed to do in a world that was still dangerous for them. Transposing today’s reality onto the past to argue that the creation of Israel was useless is completely anachronistic.
Having said that, Israelis and Zionists ought to ask themselves what they would have done if they were Palestinians. Would they have made room for another people, even though they were not responsible for their hardship?
Unless they believe that wealth redistribution applies to national rights and not just economic matters, which is not a concept universally agreed upon, there is no way they would have given away part of their homeland to another people. (Israel’s founders argued that regardless of antisemitic persecution, if all peoples are entitled to self-determination, the Arabs who owned a vast territory in the Middle East must share a part of it with the Jews who were homeless).
MIT professor, Stephen Van Evera, argued that only when Israelis and Palestinians understand that they are both victims (of Europe) will they be ready for a genuine compromise.
I’m sorry to say that Beinart’s worldview is no less simplistic than that of the Israeli right. Radical “post-colonial" anti-Zionism is one of the last remnants of communism. It might be very fashionable (just like Maoism among French intellectuals 50 years ago), but it won’t age well.
Has anyone else noticed that when pro-Palestinians, including Beinart, criticize Palestinians (whether for antisemitism or anything else) it's always on the grounds not that whatever is criticized is inherently wrong, but that it might negatively effect Palestinians in some way? Very informative.
Peter's pal Khalil Al-Shaqaqi gives the real reason the Palestinian academics came up with their letter condemning Abbas' statements.
"The Holocaust is a European issue and the Palestinian people are the ones paying the price for it. The president increases the problems of the Palestinian people, with baseless statements based on the words of some marginal historians. Therefore, we issued the statement because we believe that what the president spoke is harmful to the Palestinian cause."
"There is respect and support for us in the world, and if the world feels and sees that the Palestinian people support what the president said, this will mean to them that the Palestinian people are racist, and this means to them that there is racist settler colonialism, and also racist Palestinians, and therefore they will put us and Israelis are in the same dark trench. If we go into the same crucible of racism and anti-Semitism, we will become no different from the occupier."
The letter was one thing and one thing only: damage control.
Of course it was just damage control. The writers make that clear when they condemn "the morally and politically reprehensible comments made by President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas about the Holocaust" without saying what the comments were, or giving the reader any clue to when or where the comments were made. If your intention is to let people know that someone has said something wrong, then you tell them what the person said, and you tell them why it's wrong. If your intention instead is only to signal to people that you're reasonable and nice, after they've voiced objections to someone's comments, then you tell them that you condemn comments by the person, adding some adjectives of judgment but omitting details because you hope that people will infer that you are objecting to the same things as they are, and for the same reasons.
And the fact that they chose to give their letter the title "Palestinian Open Letter" is itself weird enough that it should make readers notice that something weird is going on.
Why can’t the letter both be “damage control” in essence but also, in content, be a sincere and accurate expression of their positions on the matter? Those don’t seem exclusionary.
Well, many of the people who signed the letter have said anti-Semitic things or support anti-Semitic groups in the past. That would indicate that their opposition to Abbas' anti-Semitism isn't opposition to anti-Semitism in and of itself.
Your comment about Palestinian intellectuals condemning Abu Mazen includes the following:
“The Palestinian people are sufficiently burdened by Israeli settler colonialism, dispossession, occupation, and oppression without having to bear the negative effect of such ignorant and profoundly antisemitic narratives perpetuated by those who claim to speak in our name,” the open letter added.
“Abbas and his political entourage have forfeited any claim to represent the Palestinian people and our struggle for justice, freedom, and equality, a struggle that stands against all forms of systemic racism and oppression.”
Settler colonialism …by the way “ Professor” that includes the 1948 lands as well and is signed by rabid Anti Zionists including Rashid Khalidi and Sam Bohour …this line of pseudo intellectual reasoning harkens back to Beirut and the PLO in the 1970s when Arafat said “…we are not Anti Semitic just Anti Zionist…” and then the IDF and SLA found troves of anti semitic literature left behind by Arafat and his cadres
"It’s not the job of Palestinians to apologize for the words of the collaborator imposed and funded by the Zionists and their US/EU accomplices to oppress the Palestinian people.
Abbas's offensive words were just that: words — whereas his crimes against the Palestinian people: murder, torture, imprisonment, betrayal of the resistance, have never been condemned by his US/EU and Israeli masters, on the contrary they fund him to do that."
Abbas is a convenient stooge. Helping Israel to exclude the kind of elections that would answer your very good question. We don't know. When were the last Palestinian elections? Where? And why the delays?
In Israel there are an average of one a year nowadays.
wiki "The last elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) were held on 25 January 2006. There have not been any elections either for president or for the legislature since these two elections." - A convenient state of affairs for Abbas and Israel. Then he comes up with dumb statements (just words) so that we can pretend there is a real tension and he can claim Palestinian bona fides. Charades and Smokescreens.
He certainly is convenient, for both sides. You just used him yourself, blaming him and therefore Israel for the complete and utter lack of democracy in Palestine. No one more moderate than the Holocaust denying anti-Semite could ever hold power in Palestine for long, so it works out for Palestine apologists that there is no one person who represents the Palestinians.
Well, many legitimate and talented individuals exist that could well occupy this role. But everything is done to stifle or eliminate them. Is Marwan Barghouti a Palestinian Nelson Mandela? Maybe so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marwan_Barghouti
Marwan Barghouti, the murderer? I wouldn't call him "legitimate and talented" but I suppose if that's the best you can come up with that says a lot about Palestine.
The whole world held the same criminal view of Nelson Mandela just years before he became president. Marwan Barghouti's profile, intelligence and sense of resolve and leadership is not dissimilar to Nelson Mandela's, who, incidentally, was still on a terrorist watchlist when visiting the US as President of South Africa. Everything was done to deny either's legitimacy, to silence them. How many murderers among the founders of Israel? The winners write the history. Luckily for the Jewish nation you have the New Historians for whom justice and historical truth trumps tribalism.
Isn’t it because everyone—the PA, the Israelis, and the international community—knows Fatah will lose and Hamas will thereafter administer all Palestinian-controlled areas of the WB? It would foment the formal end of the Oslo process, which Hamas does not recognize.
Seems to be a safe assumption. But avoiding it is just delaying the inevitable at this point.
IMO, it’s more accurate to say that the internationally -envisioned political process for Palestinian liberation—both its noble elements and its ignoble ones—has hit its ceiling and has failed. For better or for worse.
“ If it weren’t for Amira Hass and Gideon Levy of Haaretz, and +972 Magazine, and. B‘Tselem and a few activists and aid workers, who would know about the serial crimes of the occupation? Who would know except the “Israel Defense Forces” soldiers who know and the Israelis they tell their “war stories” to, and they apparently they aren’t breaking their silence. A conspiracy of silence.
Except for Breaking the Silence—who get persecuted as “traitors.”
If Jews anywhere in the world were treated like Palestinians are routinely treated it would be front page news in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA times, Le Monde, The London Times, the Berliner Zeitung…etc.
A conspiracy of silence. Hass’s and Levy’s columns should be syndicated in the U.S. major papers. What has stopped that? What has stopped that is the ferocious, coordinated, mega-funded attacks those papers would be subject to, slandered and vilified as “antisemites.” And yet economic boycott—that too, is branded “antisemitic.”
You're right, Paul - but for the most part, nobody is 100% right in this falsely complex game, where the basic premise is the trusty old divide and rule.
Many people recognise Oslo, almost no-one takes steps to implement it. Yet we constantly see archives of the Rose Garden signing. Celebrating a programmed failure?
The mightiest powers still talk about a now theoretical two-state solution when it is patently impossible on the ground.
And the convenience of the Hamas bogeyman? At its beginnings it was funded by Israel to stymie unity under the PLO, thus pushing from the mostly secular to the Islamist where worse than Hamas is possible. My reference is not the Electronic Intifada but the Wall Street Journal in 2009: How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas : https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847
How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas (intro extract)
By Andrew Higgins
Jan. 24, 2009 12:01 am ET
Moshav Tekuma, Israel
Surveying the wreckage of a neighbor's bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile's trajectory back to an "enormous, stupid mistake" made 30 years ago.
"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born
Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious
affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take
shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today
Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction.
Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for
years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the
secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant
faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric
named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would
become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the
recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins,"
primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.
Last Saturday, after 22 days of war, Israel announced a halt to the offensive. The
assault was aimed at stopping Hamas rockets from falling on Israel. Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert hailed a "determined and successful military operation." More than
1,200 Palestinians had died. Thirteen Israelis were also killed.
Hamas responded the next day by... see source for rest
Hi there, Maxwell Smart, secret agent man. You’ll get no argument from me on much of this.
In fact, you left out how the Oslo Accords allowed a kind of loophole on unlimited settlement expansion that is being pushed by Kohelet Policy Forum types, like Eugene Kontorovich. So ironically, the “peace process” as implemented is being used to undermine peace.
Who told you to say that King Charles or George Galloway ? Who are you West Londoner to tell the Palestinians how to keep their house in order? …you British stoog your colonial panties are showing😡
By the way who is he to tell anyone how their nation should conduct their internal political discussions…he should concentrate on having tea and enjoy being an Oxford Don
Oh, I see, you’re attempting an insult on the “irish” angle…
Yeah, seriously. Sean should leave that to us Americans who have a god-given birthright to tell every country just how to run their internal business. 😃
Isn't Avi Chlaim an Oxford Don? "Avraham "Avi" Shlaim FBA is an Israeli-British historian, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and fellow of the British Academy. He is one of Israel's New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Israel."
“Abu Mazen is thought of generally as colourless, moderately corrupt, and without any clear ideas of his own, except that he wants to please the white man.” Edward Said
This Brit has never been impressed by anyone who brags - or hates - based on ancestry. There's plenty of it here in the UK, notably with our aristocracy and its admirers who think there's something amazing about how long their family has lived on a particular patch of earth. So far as I can see, ancestry means diddly-squat, and that applies to every place on Earth and to any group of humans who make play of their family history. Is Jewishness defined by 'blood' (which is obviously a gift to racists and has little or no basis in reality) or by customs, religion or other attributes (as it must be if people can convert to/from Jewishness)?
The same applies to every other so-called race, which brings to mind the absurd furore in 2019 over the American Senator Elizabeth Warren, who had to apologise for claiming to be Native American. Basically: so what?
True. It shouldn't matter. A person with 100% African ancestry can be 100% British. But the problem is when ancestry, etc, is abused and manipulated for nefarious and other political ends. (Elizabeth Warren made an electioneering mistake with her claim, not such a big deal compared to her stabbing of Bernie Sanders).
When it comes to DNA defined ancestry, we've never been in a stronger position to define sources. Israel at the cutting edge is best placed to use this.
Not that the outcome should matter, but the science is (now) there.
I wasn't aware that Sen. Warren had violently assaulted Sen. Sanders.
I'm still unaware of whether Jewishness is inherited or is just a religious belief. Online, there seem to be all kinds of opinions. But either way, it's no reason to steal land, any more than professing a Christian faith was a reason to steal northern America from its peoples.
Abusing ancestry for nefarious ends is the specialty of aristocrats here, specifically the Windsors.
I just mean that no person or people has a right to subjugate another on the basis of any aspect of their identity. On that principle, all of the discriminations against the Jewish people(s), from the inquisition, to the pogroms to the ghettoisation to the holocaust were profoundly wrong. The same crimes against any other people is equally wrong.
Yes, we are all Norman Finkelstein bots! - Of course not. is it so hard to believe that human justice is more important than tribalism for most people.
It was a metaphor. In the debates she threw some low blows and he resisted by not responding in kind. She went low. He stayed cool. Though both were the most similar in political DNA (sic) as in Main street vs Wall street.
I think there are may ways of being Jewish, ethnic, religeous, cultural... and more, I'm sure. I have an affection of the latter, a culture born of its circumstances.
The DNA analysis might prove that many Palestinians are ethnic Jews, just changing religeon over the past 15 centuries, from Judiasm to Islam to Christianity back to Islam, for convenience or to save their lives or ensure their children's future.
Ah, I thought I'd have read something about such an incident between two senators. Still, if it was good enough to do away with Julius Caesar...
I'm sure you're right about the DNA. People who live in the same region for a long time will intermarry and start to look like one another. Their religious faiths, as well, are naturally similar to anyone but true believers. Irish Catholics and Protestants have beliefs that are, to atheists, close to indistinguishable. Likewise Islam and Judaism.
It was during the primary debates. They were on similar social justice politics and she tried to eliminate him instead of colluding. She tried, failed, lost. He could have been a contender to be the first Jewish president of the US.
I'm glad you understand that my opinion is that any violence usually begets even more violence and that all people are equal in the light of the tragedies that ensue. The death of an Israeli child is as tragic as the death of a Palestinian child. I sense you don't agree with that. So yes we can disagree.
You characterize as "really excellent" the "Palestinian Open Letter" (its actual title, strange as it is) signed by those very important Palestinian scholars condemning some comments by Mahmoud Abbas. And yet you also say that it's important that Abbas's comments "need to be understood", so you're basically admitting that the letter does not contribute to understanding the comments. I find the letter very disappointing, because it doesn't say specifically which comments it's condemning. It refers only to "the morally and politically reprehensible comments made by President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas about the Holocaust." It doesn't say even roughly when or where these comments were made: for all anyone can tell, the letter might be referring to the dissertation that Abbas wrote in the 1980s. When academics write a letter condemning someone for some comments, if they don't quote the comments they're condemning then it reflects badly on them as academics. Academics are supposed to be interested in educating their readers about ideas, right or wrong, not about whether people are good or bad. If the leader of the Palestinian Authority said something in a speech, then probably there are a lot of other Palestinians who would be inclined to agree with it. So tell them (and others too) why it's wrong. What kind of example do they think they're setting for their students?
There are two objectionable things you point out in Abbas's comments:
(1) he says that Ashkenazi Jews are not Semites but are instead descended from the Khazars, a non-Semitic people.
(2) he says that Hitler massacred the Jews not because they were Jews but because of "a social role in Europe" that they played.
By my reading, I don't think there's anything in the "Palestinian Open Letter" that addresses point (1), about alleged Khazar origins of the Ashkenazi people. It's point (2) that the letter condemns. But why is it worthy of condemnation if he said that the Jews' "social role in Europe" led to resentment and hatred by other Europeans? I once attended a session at a Sabeel conference where a member of Jewish Voice for Peace had a presentation about "What is antisemitism?" and gave this same story that you attribute here to "scholars", that European antisemitism arose from Jews' position "between the peasantry and the nobility". Now what Abbas is emphasizing in his comments is that it was this that led to hatred of Jews -- not the Jewish religion, nor that Jews were considered to be "Semites".
I do agree with you that he brings up the Khazar origin theory of Ashkenazi Jews as a way of saying that they are not biological descendants of people who lived in Palestine (though he says that Sephardic Jews are). I don't necessarily find the evidence convincing one way or the other, but I do think you dismiss the theory too easily. There is a Wikipedia article that presents both sides:
There is a lot of basic, racist comments about what "jews" think or do and what "Palestinians" think or do. We don't need a specific term that applies to Jews - or anyone else. Let's just try calling racism by its name whomever it is being applied to.
"For Palestinians to address Abbas in any way, even in condemnation, is to implicitly recognize him and take collective responsibility for him, which is not ours. Nor will an "open letter" in English, appease or impress his Zionist masters and our other enemies
Palestinians, including myself, have repeatedly and consistently condemned anti-Semitism, along with other forms of racism including Zionism. We are already on record and don't need to keep repeating ourselves. Enough.
Finally, we must resist how the Zionists and their Euro-American accomplices, who are all too happy to ally with pro-Israel anti-Semites, cynically and hypocritically weaponize the European Christian genocide of European Jews against the Palestinians.
Palestinians have had enough of Europe’s Holocaust hypocrisy."
"And what’s striking to me about Abbas’ statements is the way in which they kind of rehearse the very same kind of dehumanizing things that Jews say about Palestinians"
You might want to edit this line, Peter, so it isn't a broad statement about Jews in general. A less intellectually honest person might use this line to claim anti-Semitism on your part, because you're saying that Jews in general say dehumanizing things about Palestinians.
"Or similarly, when Mahmoud Abbas says, ‘well, the Jews brought their suffering on themselves,’ right? The reason they suffered so much in Europe was because they were doing these bad things like usury and money lending. Again, it’s quite similar to people who say, ‘well, if the Palestinians are suffering now, they’ve really just brought it on themselves. If they didn’t do all these bad things, then they wouldn’t be suffering under apartheid without basic rights,’ right?"
Palestinian governments and armed groups are actively and indisputably murdering Jews and launching terror attacks and have been for decades, with the widespread support of their people. The only way this analogy holds is if Jews in Europe were actually doing the "bad things" Abbas accuses them of. If Jews were literally using the blood of Christian babies to make matzah, and the Christians hated them for that, I don't think anyone would say it's anti-Semitic to make that point.
The difference is that Jews in Europe were not widespread purveyors of usury like Abbas says they were. The problem is the lie that explains the Holocaust, not just the explanation in and of itself. Lots of people look for reasons the Holocaust happened. They don't get accused of anti-Semitism except when they lie about things Jews did. Likewise, the things Palestinian terror groups are accused of are not lies. They don't even bother to deny the child murder, the rockets, etc.
Nothing to do with Abbas, but still relevant.
For Israel, the Oslo Accords Were a Resounding Success
The creation of Palestinian enclaves is an internal Israeli compromise: making the Palestinians disappear without expelling them. In the meantime, Israel reaps great profits, in part by turning the West Bank and Gaza into a human laboratory
Amira Hass Haaretz Israeli Newspaper Sept 12, 2023
“Thanks to Oslo, Israel absolved itself of the occupier’s responsibility for the people and their welfare. And it kept the cream: control over land, water, the cellphone wavelengths, the maritime and air space, freedom of movement, the economy and borders (both external and of every pocket of territory).
Israel rakes in enormous profits from these levers of control, as it oversees a large human laboratory where it develops and tests its most profitable exports: arms, munitions and control-and surveillance technology. The Palestinians in this lab – deprived of authority and whose resources are shrinking – have been left with the responsibility of managing their problems and civilian affairs.
Western countries have absolved Israel of its financial duties as the occupying power and have financed much of the management, maintenance and limited development expenses of the Palestinian enclaves. The explanation is that this is necessary to establish a Palestinian state. But for years now, the Western countries have had enough of subsidizing the occupation and its problems, so they punish the Palestinians with tight-fistedness and warn of humanitarian disasters, while they sign generous economic, scientific and military agreements with Israel.”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-09-12/ty-article/.premium/for-israel-the-oslo-accords-were-a-resounding-success/0000018a-8429-daff-a5ef-cc3fedf50000
You're right, it has nothing to do with Abbas or his Holocaust denying comments, so I don't see how it's relevant. Maybe you can explain the relevance, with your own thoughts this time, instead of the constant regurgitation of someone else's.
Amira Hass is truth telling about the facts on the ground in the West Bank.
Abbas is Israel’s subcontractor in the West Bank. Can you see the relevance?
Can you see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, about Israel’s brutal military occupation of the Palestinians?
I get it, you prefer to hear comments from someone thousands of miles from Palestine, rather than someone in the thick of it.
I would advise anyone who wants to know the facts on the ground in Palestine,to subscribe to the Israel newspaper, Haaretz, reading articles by Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and others.
This Is Palestine, a documentary video by Irishman John McColgan is worth a look.
https://youtu.be/_jYL2kGN5Zk?si=GHjN1oHRR_1lCFTI
If Abbas is Israel's subcontractor, the Palestinians should get him out of there and install a leader who actually represents them. You know, someone like Ismail Haniyeh.
Does Benjamin Netanyahu represent all Israelis? Or Donald Trump all Americans? Sometimes oppositional candidates with minority support come to power from maneuvering among political factions and fault lines or as an indictment of the status quo. You understand all this. West Bank Palestinians would probably prefer a trained circus ape over Abbas at this point, if given the choice.
Netanyahu represents the state of Israel and the Israeli nation, yes. Same with Trump when he was President, he represented the United States and the American people. Palestine is no exception to this.
Thoughtful/Winters credibly threatened me in another thread here. Just letting everyone know the integrity of the person you’re dealing with here.
Those who signed this letter are definitely not antisemitic, but most of them reject the concept of Jewish peoplehood (and they have endorsed Shlomo Sand’s nonsense). Just like Rivlin, they oppose racism, but they want exclusive sovereignty over the whole land (in a binational state, the majority calls the shorts, no matter what the constitution says).
There is one thing most Israelis and most Palestinians have in common (that includes Western leftists such as Peter Beinart of course): they lack the intellectual flexibility to understand that there can be such thing as a conflict between two legitimacies. The best way to overcome a clash of rights is to envision creative solutions (such as a confederation), not to opt for a simplistic understanding of history and reach no less simplistic conclusions (that Israeli Jews must make do with mere autonomy, while the Palestinians only are entitled to full-fledged self-determination).
From a universal values perspective (anti-Zionists love to talk about universal values, as long as only Palestinians can benefit from them), this conflict is a clash of rights. Since the late 1960s, Western leftists (including Jewish leftists who call for the dismantling of Israel) no longer understand why the creation of Israel was a necessity, as Jews are no longer in danger. But in the late 1940s, the world was still divided between countries that persecuted the Jews and those that refused to welcome them. It was impossible at the time to predict that their fate would improve so much in the second part of the 20th century. And those who claim that a Jewish state should have been established in Germany fail to understand that the Israeli pre-state society existed before the Holocaust. A binational too was not an option. This idea was shelved by Ben Gurion after the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1936, as even the most magnanimous Palestinian nationalist insisted on imposing caps on Jewish immigration, so as to make sure Jews never become the majority. If Peter Beinart believes that a Jewish state was wrong, the onus is on him to explain what Jews were supposed to do in a world that was still dangerous for them. Transposing today’s reality onto the past to argue that the creation of Israel was useless is completely anachronistic.
Having said that, Israelis and Zionists ought to ask themselves what they would have done if they were Palestinians. Would they have made room for another people, even though they were not responsible for their hardship?
Unless they believe that wealth redistribution applies to national rights and not just economic matters, which is not a concept universally agreed upon, there is no way they would have given away part of their homeland to another people. (Israel’s founders argued that regardless of antisemitic persecution, if all peoples are entitled to self-determination, the Arabs who owned a vast territory in the Middle East must share a part of it with the Jews who were homeless).
MIT professor, Stephen Van Evera, argued that only when Israelis and Palestinians understand that they are both victims (of Europe) will they be ready for a genuine compromise.
I’m sorry to say that Beinart’s worldview is no less simplistic than that of the Israeli right. Radical “post-colonial" anti-Zionism is one of the last remnants of communism. It might be very fashionable (just like Maoism among French intellectuals 50 years ago), but it won’t age well.
Has anyone else noticed that when pro-Palestinians, including Beinart, criticize Palestinians (whether for antisemitism or anything else) it's always on the grounds not that whatever is criticized is inherently wrong, but that it might negatively effect Palestinians in some way? Very informative.
Peter's pal Khalil Al-Shaqaqi gives the real reason the Palestinian academics came up with their letter condemning Abbas' statements.
"The Holocaust is a European issue and the Palestinian people are the ones paying the price for it. The president increases the problems of the Palestinian people, with baseless statements based on the words of some marginal historians. Therefore, we issued the statement because we believe that what the president spoke is harmful to the Palestinian cause."
"There is respect and support for us in the world, and if the world feels and sees that the Palestinian people support what the president said, this will mean to them that the Palestinian people are racist, and this means to them that there is racist settler colonialism, and also racist Palestinians, and therefore they will put us and Israelis are in the same dark trench. If we go into the same crucible of racism and anti-Semitism, we will become no different from the occupier."
The letter was one thing and one thing only: damage control.
Of course it was just damage control. The writers make that clear when they condemn "the morally and politically reprehensible comments made by President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas about the Holocaust" without saying what the comments were, or giving the reader any clue to when or where the comments were made. If your intention is to let people know that someone has said something wrong, then you tell them what the person said, and you tell them why it's wrong. If your intention instead is only to signal to people that you're reasonable and nice, after they've voiced objections to someone's comments, then you tell them that you condemn comments by the person, adding some adjectives of judgment but omitting details because you hope that people will infer that you are objecting to the same things as they are, and for the same reasons.
And the fact that they chose to give their letter the title "Palestinian Open Letter" is itself weird enough that it should make readers notice that something weird is going on.
Thoughtful/Winters credibly threatened me in another thread here. Just letting everyone know the integrity of the person you’re dealing with here.
Why can’t the letter both be “damage control” in essence but also, in content, be a sincere and accurate expression of their positions on the matter? Those don’t seem exclusionary.
Well, many of the people who signed the letter have said anti-Semitic things or support anti-Semitic groups in the past. That would indicate that their opposition to Abbas' anti-Semitism isn't opposition to anti-Semitism in and of itself.
Your comment about Palestinian intellectuals condemning Abu Mazen includes the following:
“The Palestinian people are sufficiently burdened by Israeli settler colonialism, dispossession, occupation, and oppression without having to bear the negative effect of such ignorant and profoundly antisemitic narratives perpetuated by those who claim to speak in our name,” the open letter added.
“Abbas and his political entourage have forfeited any claim to represent the Palestinian people and our struggle for justice, freedom, and equality, a struggle that stands against all forms of systemic racism and oppression.”
Settler colonialism …by the way “ Professor” that includes the 1948 lands as well and is signed by rabid Anti Zionists including Rashid Khalidi and Sam Bohour …this line of pseudo intellectual reasoning harkens back to Beirut and the PLO in the 1970s when Arafat said “…we are not Anti Semitic just Anti Zionist…” and then the IDF and SLA found troves of anti semitic literature left behind by Arafat and his cadres
"It’s not the job of Palestinians to apologize for the words of the collaborator imposed and funded by the Zionists and their US/EU accomplices to oppress the Palestinian people.
Abbas's offensive words were just that: words — whereas his crimes against the Palestinian people: murder, torture, imprisonment, betrayal of the resistance, have never been condemned by his US/EU and Israeli masters, on the contrary they fund him to do that."
If Abbas is just a collaborator, then who represents the Palestinian people? Hamas?
Abbas is a convenient stooge. Helping Israel to exclude the kind of elections that would answer your very good question. We don't know. When were the last Palestinian elections? Where? And why the delays?
In Israel there are an average of one a year nowadays.
wiki "The last elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) were held on 25 January 2006. There have not been any elections either for president or for the legislature since these two elections." - A convenient state of affairs for Abbas and Israel. Then he comes up with dumb statements (just words) so that we can pretend there is a real tension and he can claim Palestinian bona fides. Charades and Smokescreens.
He certainly is convenient, for both sides. You just used him yourself, blaming him and therefore Israel for the complete and utter lack of democracy in Palestine. No one more moderate than the Holocaust denying anti-Semite could ever hold power in Palestine for long, so it works out for Palestine apologists that there is no one person who represents the Palestinians.
Well, many legitimate and talented individuals exist that could well occupy this role. But everything is done to stifle or eliminate them. Is Marwan Barghouti a Palestinian Nelson Mandela? Maybe so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marwan_Barghouti
Marwan Barghouti, the murderer? I wouldn't call him "legitimate and talented" but I suppose if that's the best you can come up with that says a lot about Palestine.
The whole world held the same criminal view of Nelson Mandela just years before he became president. Marwan Barghouti's profile, intelligence and sense of resolve and leadership is not dissimilar to Nelson Mandela's, who, incidentally, was still on a terrorist watchlist when visiting the US as President of South Africa. Everything was done to deny either's legitimacy, to silence them. How many murderers among the founders of Israel? The winners write the history. Luckily for the Jewish nation you have the New Historians for whom justice and historical truth trumps tribalism.
“ And why the delays?
Isn’t it because everyone—the PA, the Israelis, and the international community—knows Fatah will lose and Hamas will thereafter administer all Palestinian-controlled areas of the WB? It would foment the formal end of the Oslo process, which Hamas does not recognize.
Seems to be a safe assumption. But avoiding it is just delaying the inevitable at this point.
Correct, Paul. And this notion of Palestine as a noble victim who just wants peace will blow away like smoke.
IMO, it’s more accurate to say that the internationally -envisioned political process for Palestinian liberation—both its noble elements and its ignoble ones—has hit its ceiling and has failed. For better or for worse.
“ If it weren’t for Amira Hass and Gideon Levy of Haaretz, and +972 Magazine, and. B‘Tselem and a few activists and aid workers, who would know about the serial crimes of the occupation? Who would know except the “Israel Defense Forces” soldiers who know and the Israelis they tell their “war stories” to, and they apparently they aren’t breaking their silence. A conspiracy of silence.
Except for Breaking the Silence—who get persecuted as “traitors.”
If Jews anywhere in the world were treated like Palestinians are routinely treated it would be front page news in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA times, Le Monde, The London Times, the Berliner Zeitung…etc.
A conspiracy of silence. Hass’s and Levy’s columns should be syndicated in the U.S. major papers. What has stopped that? What has stopped that is the ferocious, coordinated, mega-funded attacks those papers would be subject to, slandered and vilified as “antisemites.” And yet economic boycott—that too, is branded “antisemitic.”
You're right, Paul - but for the most part, nobody is 100% right in this falsely complex game, where the basic premise is the trusty old divide and rule.
Many people recognise Oslo, almost no-one takes steps to implement it. Yet we constantly see archives of the Rose Garden signing. Celebrating a programmed failure?
The mightiest powers still talk about a now theoretical two-state solution when it is patently impossible on the ground.
And the convenience of the Hamas bogeyman? At its beginnings it was funded by Israel to stymie unity under the PLO, thus pushing from the mostly secular to the Islamist where worse than Hamas is possible. My reference is not the Electronic Intifada but the Wall Street Journal in 2009: How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas : https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847
How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas (intro extract)
By Andrew Higgins
Jan. 24, 2009 12:01 am ET
Moshav Tekuma, Israel
Surveying the wreckage of a neighbor's bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile's trajectory back to an "enormous, stupid mistake" made 30 years ago.
"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born
Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious
affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take
shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today
Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction.
Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for
years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the
secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant
faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric
named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would
become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the
recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins,"
primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.
Last Saturday, after 22 days of war, Israel announced a halt to the offensive. The
assault was aimed at stopping Hamas rockets from falling on Israel. Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert hailed a "determined and successful military operation." More than
1,200 Palestinians had died. Thirteen Israelis were also killed.
Hamas responded the next day by... see source for rest
andrew.higgins@wsj.com
Hi there, Maxwell Smart, secret agent man. You’ll get no argument from me on much of this.
In fact, you left out how the Oslo Accords allowed a kind of loophole on unlimited settlement expansion that is being pushed by Kohelet Policy Forum types, like Eugene Kontorovich. So ironically, the “peace process” as implemented is being used to undermine peace.
Thoughtful/Winters credibly threatened me in another thread here. Just letting everyone know the integrity of the person you’re dealing with here.
Who told you to say that King Charles or George Galloway ? Who are you West Londoner to tell the Palestinians how to keep their house in order? …you British stoog your colonial panties are showing😡
Huh? What a bizarre comment…
By the way who is he to tell anyone how their nation should conduct their internal political discussions…he should concentrate on having tea and enjoy being an Oxford Don
Oh, I see, you’re attempting an insult on the “irish” angle…
Yeah, seriously. Sean should leave that to us Americans who have a god-given birthright to tell every country just how to run their internal business. 😃
Isn't Avi Chlaim an Oxford Don? "Avraham "Avi" Shlaim FBA is an Israeli-British historian, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and fellow of the British Academy. He is one of Israel's New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Israel."
That individual is a Irish Anglophile…if he can attack our nation and motives than his are fair game
Winters, you are so funny😃
I thought this was an open forum?
My opinions vary with others, sometimes aligned more or less, others the opposite.
I thought we were in the spirit of discussion.
“Abu Mazen is thought of generally as colourless, moderately corrupt, and without any clear ideas of his own, except that he wants to please the white man.” Edward Said
This Brit has never been impressed by anyone who brags - or hates - based on ancestry. There's plenty of it here in the UK, notably with our aristocracy and its admirers who think there's something amazing about how long their family has lived on a particular patch of earth. So far as I can see, ancestry means diddly-squat, and that applies to every place on Earth and to any group of humans who make play of their family history. Is Jewishness defined by 'blood' (which is obviously a gift to racists and has little or no basis in reality) or by customs, religion or other attributes (as it must be if people can convert to/from Jewishness)?
The same applies to every other so-called race, which brings to mind the absurd furore in 2019 over the American Senator Elizabeth Warren, who had to apologise for claiming to be Native American. Basically: so what?
True. It shouldn't matter. A person with 100% African ancestry can be 100% British. But the problem is when ancestry, etc, is abused and manipulated for nefarious and other political ends. (Elizabeth Warren made an electioneering mistake with her claim, not such a big deal compared to her stabbing of Bernie Sanders).
When it comes to DNA defined ancestry, we've never been in a stronger position to define sources. Israel at the cutting edge is best placed to use this.
Not that the outcome should matter, but the science is (now) there.
I wasn't aware that Sen. Warren had violently assaulted Sen. Sanders.
I'm still unaware of whether Jewishness is inherited or is just a religious belief. Online, there seem to be all kinds of opinions. But either way, it's no reason to steal land, any more than professing a Christian faith was a reason to steal northern America from its peoples.
Abusing ancestry for nefarious ends is the specialty of aristocrats here, specifically the Windsors.
James, does that you mean you also believe that Palestinian ancestry is no reason to steal land either?
I just mean that no person or people has a right to subjugate another on the basis of any aspect of their identity. On that principle, all of the discriminations against the Jewish people(s), from the inquisition, to the pogroms to the ghettoisation to the holocaust were profoundly wrong. The same crimes against any other people is equally wrong.
Max, are you yet another account of James Simpson/Rebecca Turner?
Yes, we are all Norman Finkelstein bots! - Of course not. is it so hard to believe that human justice is more important than tribalism for most people.
It was a metaphor. In the debates she threw some low blows and he resisted by not responding in kind. She went low. He stayed cool. Though both were the most similar in political DNA (sic) as in Main street vs Wall street.
I think there are may ways of being Jewish, ethnic, religeous, cultural... and more, I'm sure. I have an affection of the latter, a culture born of its circumstances.
The DNA analysis might prove that many Palestinians are ethnic Jews, just changing religeon over the past 15 centuries, from Judiasm to Islam to Christianity back to Islam, for convenience or to save their lives or ensure their children's future.
Ah, I thought I'd have read something about such an incident between two senators. Still, if it was good enough to do away with Julius Caesar...
I'm sure you're right about the DNA. People who live in the same region for a long time will intermarry and start to look like one another. Their religious faiths, as well, are naturally similar to anyone but true believers. Irish Catholics and Protestants have beliefs that are, to atheists, close to indistinguishable. Likewise Islam and Judaism.
It was during the primary debates. They were on similar social justice politics and she tried to eliminate him instead of colluding. She tried, failed, lost. He could have been a contender to be the first Jewish president of the US.
Regarding Jews and Muslims, there is a wonderful doc mini series that traces the relationship from the origins of Islam https://variety.com/2011/tv/news/nrk-tsr-buy-jews-and-muslims-1118042513/
or
https://boutique.arte.tv/detail/juifs_musulmans_serie
Thoughtful/Winters credibly threatened me in another thread here. Just letting everyone know the integrity of the person you’re dealing with here.
I'm glad you understand that my opinion is that any violence usually begets even more violence and that all people are equal in the light of the tragedies that ensue. The death of an Israeli child is as tragic as the death of a Palestinian child. I sense you don't agree with that. So yes we can disagree.
Anti-semitism is wrong and cruel regardless who is behind it
You characterize as "really excellent" the "Palestinian Open Letter" (its actual title, strange as it is) signed by those very important Palestinian scholars condemning some comments by Mahmoud Abbas. And yet you also say that it's important that Abbas's comments "need to be understood", so you're basically admitting that the letter does not contribute to understanding the comments. I find the letter very disappointing, because it doesn't say specifically which comments it's condemning. It refers only to "the morally and politically reprehensible comments made by President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas about the Holocaust." It doesn't say even roughly when or where these comments were made: for all anyone can tell, the letter might be referring to the dissertation that Abbas wrote in the 1980s. When academics write a letter condemning someone for some comments, if they don't quote the comments they're condemning then it reflects badly on them as academics. Academics are supposed to be interested in educating their readers about ideas, right or wrong, not about whether people are good or bad. If the leader of the Palestinian Authority said something in a speech, then probably there are a lot of other Palestinians who would be inclined to agree with it. So tell them (and others too) why it's wrong. What kind of example do they think they're setting for their students?
There are two objectionable things you point out in Abbas's comments:
(1) he says that Ashkenazi Jews are not Semites but are instead descended from the Khazars, a non-Semitic people.
(2) he says that Hitler massacred the Jews not because they were Jews but because of "a social role in Europe" that they played.
By my reading, I don't think there's anything in the "Palestinian Open Letter" that addresses point (1), about alleged Khazar origins of the Ashkenazi people. It's point (2) that the letter condemns. But why is it worthy of condemnation if he said that the Jews' "social role in Europe" led to resentment and hatred by other Europeans? I once attended a session at a Sabeel conference where a member of Jewish Voice for Peace had a presentation about "What is antisemitism?" and gave this same story that you attribute here to "scholars", that European antisemitism arose from Jews' position "between the peasantry and the nobility". Now what Abbas is emphasizing in his comments is that it was this that led to hatred of Jews -- not the Jewish religion, nor that Jews were considered to be "Semites".
I do agree with you that he brings up the Khazar origin theory of Ashkenazi Jews as a way of saying that they are not biological descendants of people who lived in Palestine (though he says that Sephardic Jews are). I don't necessarily find the evidence convincing one way or the other, but I do think you dismiss the theory too easily. There is a Wikipedia article that presents both sides:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi_ancestry
There is a lot of basic, racist comments about what "jews" think or do and what "Palestinians" think or do. We don't need a specific term that applies to Jews - or anyone else. Let's just try calling racism by its name whomever it is being applied to.
"For Palestinians to address Abbas in any way, even in condemnation, is to implicitly recognize him and take collective responsibility for him, which is not ours. Nor will an "open letter" in English, appease or impress his Zionist masters and our other enemies
Palestinians, including myself, have repeatedly and consistently condemned anti-Semitism, along with other forms of racism including Zionism. We are already on record and don't need to keep repeating ourselves. Enough.
Finally, we must resist how the Zionists and their Euro-American accomplices, who are all too happy to ally with pro-Israel anti-Semites, cynically and hypocritically weaponize the European Christian genocide of European Jews against the Palestinians.
Palestinians have had enough of Europe’s Holocaust hypocrisy."
We are the offspring of British colonialists…obviously you like your tea and crumpets too…