Last summer, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid gave an intriguing speech about antisemitism, a speech that—if taken seriously—constitutes a profound indictment of his own government and the American Jewish institutions that work alongside it. In the speech, Lapid said “antisemitism isn’t the first name of hate, it’s the family name.” In other words, antisemitism is the name for bigotry against Jews. But bigotry against Jews isn’t worse than bigotry against other people. All bigotry is equally bad, and thus, Lapid suggested, Jews should start calling all bigotry—or at least all bigotry that spawns widespread violence—antisemitism. “The antisemites,” he declared, “were also slave traders who threw people bound together in chains into the sea. The antisemites were the Hutu in Rwanda who massacred Tutsis.” An antisemite is anyone who “hates so much that they want to kill and eliminate and persecute and expel people just because they are different.”
Is denying the Nakba anti-Semitic? Well, let's see. What exactly is the Nakba?
According to Peter in paragraph 2 it's : "roughly 750,000 Palestinians were either expelled from their homes by Zionist and Israeli forces between 1947 and 1949 or fled their homes in terror"
But according to the same Peter in the same piece in paragraph 14 it's: "expelling 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and not permitting them to return."
If Palestine apologists like Peter wanted to actually commemorate the Nakba, what actually happened, or at the very least the historical consensus, no, commemorating the Nakba would not be an anti-Semitic act. Because commemorating the Nakba would be remembering a terrible war between the newfound state of Israel founded by indigenous Jews seeking to be independent and the Arab armies who wanted Palestine to be entirely part of the Arab world, a war in which hundreds of thousands of people on both sides were hurt, killed, and became refugees, and like all wars was a tragic result of peoples not getting along. In the case of the Palestinians, it would be commemorating the war the Palestinians started (according to Benny Morris), a war which killed 1% of the Jewish population of Palestine, and lost, the result of which was hundreds of thousands of people leaving their homes, some of whom (but not even close to all) were forced to do so.
But Peter and the rest don't want to commemorate the actual Nakba. They want to commemorate the fictional Nakba, in which evil Jews expelled every single Palestinian from their homes for no reason other than the Jews were racist and they hated the poor, innocent Palestinians who had never done anything to them. Peter reveals that himself in paragraph 14, he can't even commit to the historical facts he himself laid out earlier in his piece. That is anti-Semitic, because it presents an inaccurate and hateful depiction of Jews designed to perpetuate racial conflict and hate of Jews.
An actual nuanced view of history is messy and more complicated, and therefore less convenient to the Jew hating Palestine narrative, but it's what happened and it's time for Palestine to accept it.
When someone throws so much mud at the wall you are left with a decision do you take off every muddy stain one at the time? Do you simply whitewash the wall? Oy.
First and foremost, let’s be clear why there is an Israel and not a Palestine. And the truth is there was a choice. Not a choice made by the Arabs who lived in Palestine, but by the Arab states that surrounded Palestine. And the choice was not for a Palestine but for a NO Israel. Regardless of what was said or not said on the radio in 1948 that was in fact the case. The proof of that decision is in the various resolutions that the Palestinian people had no say in but which the Arab states blocked at the time. Thus the only approved border is the one between Israel and Lebanon. All the other borders were provisional and in place until the next round.
More proof? The West Bank and Gaza which are now sought by the Palestinians for a state were totally available for that purpose from 1948 to 1967 and all that happened was annexation by Jordan and occupation by Egypt. Even after the 1967 June war the Arab states spoke for the Palestinians and refused to negotiate. In truth the Arabs in Palestine were shafted by their Arab brothers.
As for your statement about unfairness that the Jews got 55% of the partition? P-e-le-e-a—s-e there were prior offers where Jews got a tiny sliver of the land. All rejected. Let’s be clear NO Israel was the primary objective of the Arab Nation at the time and that is the primary reason there was no Palestine.
As for the 700,000 “expelled”. For sure at least 50% were expelled and for sure; the other 50% fled. Why? Who wants to be in a war zone (look at Ukraine). And who wants to stay when the leaders depart first. And there is absolutely no question that the 1% left. And let’s be clear those are also the ones who sold all that land to the Jews.
Look at Ukraine many people think that if the Russians knocked off Zelensky the Ukrainian effort would collapse. And had he left in the first few days, as was predicted at first, we certainly would not have a Ukraine today. And millions more would have left the Ukraine. People leave war zones and hope to return when its over. But no one expects to return if the enemy wins. Bu that is not the calculus in the heat of the battle.
As for placing blame squarely on “Zionists and Israelis (as if there is a difference), that too is nonsensical. For sure, the Jews wanted Arabs out. They experienced a fair amount of Arab violence in the years leading up to the partition plan and did not believe being saddled with an Arab majority in a democratically based country would work. The animosity was palpable on both sides not just the Jews.
Want more proof of why it would not work? How about the 700,000 Jews who were disenfranchised in the Arab countries and left for the newly formed Israel? They had lived in for over a thousand years.
And finally, and this will garner me the most wrath, the Arabs in Palestine did not see themselves as Palestinians in 1948 or at any time before. They saw themselves as part of the Arab nation, at best they saw themselves as part of Syria which is why there was no demand for an immediate Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Over time the Arabs who have been refused citizenship in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt had no choice but to develop a Palestinian nationality. A nationality that requires them to unseat the State of Israel, something you now support as well. The primary effort today has been “Palestine from the river to the sea” as Rashida Tlaib, BDs and others have said.
I do have one sad memento from the 1948 departure of Arabs from Haifa. There was a large Arab population in Haifa and efforts were made by the Jews to stop the Arab population from fleeing Haifa. No, not because they loved them but because they feared the UN might end the partition if they saw so many Arabs fleeing a city. But they fled anyway. I was 5 years old at the time. I recall my father coming home shaken, we lived in Haifa at the time, and he was very upset as he described the Arabs fleeing and the Jews looting the Arab homes and stores and walking out with refrigerators and other appliances. He came home with a little brass coffee urn. He felt he had to take it away before being accused as an Arab sympathizer. I still have it.
Apparently you have fallen for Palestinian propaganda. The Palestinians like to present themselves as perennial victims who have only suffered and never done anything wrong or caused the suffering of the others. The way the UN established jewish and arab states in Palestine may or may not have been fair to the indigenous arabs, but it is was the arabs who attacked Israel and tried to destroy it in 1948, failed at that, and then kept trying and failing, over and over. Other than the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a valid beef of the Palestinians, what Israel has done with respect to the Palestinian arabs has been purely defensive in nature. The only reasons for Israel's military occupation and control over Palestinian territory have been because of continued Palestinian militancy toward Israel. Any other country would deal with a similar threat in a similar manner. Some excesses and abuses have no doubt occurred, and these deserve criticism and correction, but this does not deny the right of Israel to defend itself against constant threat. As for the Nakba, that never would have happend if the arabs hadn't attacked Israel, and it was the attacking arab countries that advised Palestinian arabs to relocate, confident that the arabs would prevail and the Palestinian arabs could then return to their homes. Any relocation of arab residents by Israel was purely defensive in nature.
While Peter and other idiots like TCinLA won’t acknowledge that the Palestinian’s mess is of their own doing and that they could have had their own country anytime for 70 years but instead continue teaching their children that one day they will succeed in driving the Jews into the sea — the Arab world is moving on. Today, there’s signs that Saudi Arabia is gearing up for normalization. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-and-saudi-arabia-said-in-us-brokered-talks-to-improve-relations/amp/
The current polemics aside- in Jewish psychology there is a category 'enemies of the Jews'. So Haman, Vespasian, Pharaoh, and Hitler are all Amalek- the Palestinians were viewed as Nazis and the Nazis are pure evil and pure evil has no legitimate POV. We were so determined to end the Diaspora that anything that got in the way, including millions of Palestinians, were brushed aside.
I think it's that simple.
I have found that my Muslim friends (and I know there are Christian Arabs) are just like my Jewish friends and family- far from being Nazis they are more like us than even the Western countries we've assimilated into
I wish that instead of resisting the parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa, more people would take them in a different spirit.
I campaigned against apartheid as a high school student and looking back now at the American debate in the 1980s, it strikes me that the anti-apartheid movement relied too much on a simplistic analogy with the US civil rights movement. We never acknowledged the most basic difference between the two cases: that whites in America were a majority but in South Africa a small minority. I don't recall any of us ever asking ourselves why the whites were behaving the way they did, much less coming up with the obvious answer: many of them thought that if and when blacks were given legal equality, they'd be exiled or annihilated.
That didn't happen but it wasn't an impossible outcome. There should have been more acknowledgement that ending apartheid carried risk: not just in the practical sense, but *moral* risk. Fighting injustice can sometimes lead to injustice, and I don't think people were sufficiently clear-eyed about that.
The analogy with Israel-Palestine ought to be obvious. I'm in favor of a one-state solution but I'm aware that most Israeli Jews look at the history of Lebanon (among other countries in the region) and assume it would end in disaster. And it might! There's no way to begin discussing the options seriously without conceding that even the best ones may fail.
If the South African comparison were made in that spirit, it might be more persuasive.
“ Abu Akleh was an iconic Palestinian journalist working in the West Bank—a territory where Jews enjoy citizenship, due process, free movement, and the ability to vote for the government that controls their lives. Meanwhile, Palestinians enjoy none of these rights. She was killed, according to eyewitnesses, by the army of the Jewish state. Yet according to Tishby, her killing highlights not bigotry against Palestinians but bigotry against Jews.”
Great piece. I particularly appreciate you confronting common Zionist defenses/justifications/mythologizing of the Nakba.
Is denying the Nakba anti-Semitic? Well, let's see. What exactly is the Nakba?
According to Peter in paragraph 2 it's : "roughly 750,000 Palestinians were either expelled from their homes by Zionist and Israeli forces between 1947 and 1949 or fled their homes in terror"
But according to the same Peter in the same piece in paragraph 14 it's: "expelling 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and not permitting them to return."
If Palestine apologists like Peter wanted to actually commemorate the Nakba, what actually happened, or at the very least the historical consensus, no, commemorating the Nakba would not be an anti-Semitic act. Because commemorating the Nakba would be remembering a terrible war between the newfound state of Israel founded by indigenous Jews seeking to be independent and the Arab armies who wanted Palestine to be entirely part of the Arab world, a war in which hundreds of thousands of people on both sides were hurt, killed, and became refugees, and like all wars was a tragic result of peoples not getting along. In the case of the Palestinians, it would be commemorating the war the Palestinians started (according to Benny Morris), a war which killed 1% of the Jewish population of Palestine, and lost, the result of which was hundreds of thousands of people leaving their homes, some of whom (but not even close to all) were forced to do so.
But Peter and the rest don't want to commemorate the actual Nakba. They want to commemorate the fictional Nakba, in which evil Jews expelled every single Palestinian from their homes for no reason other than the Jews were racist and they hated the poor, innocent Palestinians who had never done anything to them. Peter reveals that himself in paragraph 14, he can't even commit to the historical facts he himself laid out earlier in his piece. That is anti-Semitic, because it presents an inaccurate and hateful depiction of Jews designed to perpetuate racial conflict and hate of Jews.
An actual nuanced view of history is messy and more complicated, and therefore less convenient to the Jew hating Palestine narrative, but it's what happened and it's time for Palestine to accept it.
When someone throws so much mud at the wall you are left with a decision do you take off every muddy stain one at the time? Do you simply whitewash the wall? Oy.
First and foremost, let’s be clear why there is an Israel and not a Palestine. And the truth is there was a choice. Not a choice made by the Arabs who lived in Palestine, but by the Arab states that surrounded Palestine. And the choice was not for a Palestine but for a NO Israel. Regardless of what was said or not said on the radio in 1948 that was in fact the case. The proof of that decision is in the various resolutions that the Palestinian people had no say in but which the Arab states blocked at the time. Thus the only approved border is the one between Israel and Lebanon. All the other borders were provisional and in place until the next round.
More proof? The West Bank and Gaza which are now sought by the Palestinians for a state were totally available for that purpose from 1948 to 1967 and all that happened was annexation by Jordan and occupation by Egypt. Even after the 1967 June war the Arab states spoke for the Palestinians and refused to negotiate. In truth the Arabs in Palestine were shafted by their Arab brothers.
As for your statement about unfairness that the Jews got 55% of the partition? P-e-le-e-a—s-e there were prior offers where Jews got a tiny sliver of the land. All rejected. Let’s be clear NO Israel was the primary objective of the Arab Nation at the time and that is the primary reason there was no Palestine.
As for the 700,000 “expelled”. For sure at least 50% were expelled and for sure; the other 50% fled. Why? Who wants to be in a war zone (look at Ukraine). And who wants to stay when the leaders depart first. And there is absolutely no question that the 1% left. And let’s be clear those are also the ones who sold all that land to the Jews.
Look at Ukraine many people think that if the Russians knocked off Zelensky the Ukrainian effort would collapse. And had he left in the first few days, as was predicted at first, we certainly would not have a Ukraine today. And millions more would have left the Ukraine. People leave war zones and hope to return when its over. But no one expects to return if the enemy wins. Bu that is not the calculus in the heat of the battle.
As for placing blame squarely on “Zionists and Israelis (as if there is a difference), that too is nonsensical. For sure, the Jews wanted Arabs out. They experienced a fair amount of Arab violence in the years leading up to the partition plan and did not believe being saddled with an Arab majority in a democratically based country would work. The animosity was palpable on both sides not just the Jews.
Want more proof of why it would not work? How about the 700,000 Jews who were disenfranchised in the Arab countries and left for the newly formed Israel? They had lived in for over a thousand years.
And finally, and this will garner me the most wrath, the Arabs in Palestine did not see themselves as Palestinians in 1948 or at any time before. They saw themselves as part of the Arab nation, at best they saw themselves as part of Syria which is why there was no demand for an immediate Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Over time the Arabs who have been refused citizenship in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt had no choice but to develop a Palestinian nationality. A nationality that requires them to unseat the State of Israel, something you now support as well. The primary effort today has been “Palestine from the river to the sea” as Rashida Tlaib, BDs and others have said.
I do have one sad memento from the 1948 departure of Arabs from Haifa. There was a large Arab population in Haifa and efforts were made by the Jews to stop the Arab population from fleeing Haifa. No, not because they loved them but because they feared the UN might end the partition if they saw so many Arabs fleeing a city. But they fled anyway. I was 5 years old at the time. I recall my father coming home shaken, we lived in Haifa at the time, and he was very upset as he described the Arabs fleeing and the Jews looting the Arab homes and stores and walking out with refrigerators and other appliances. He came home with a little brass coffee urn. He felt he had to take it away before being accused as an Arab sympathizer. I still have it.
Apparently you have fallen for Palestinian propaganda. The Palestinians like to present themselves as perennial victims who have only suffered and never done anything wrong or caused the suffering of the others. The way the UN established jewish and arab states in Palestine may or may not have been fair to the indigenous arabs, but it is was the arabs who attacked Israel and tried to destroy it in 1948, failed at that, and then kept trying and failing, over and over. Other than the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a valid beef of the Palestinians, what Israel has done with respect to the Palestinian arabs has been purely defensive in nature. The only reasons for Israel's military occupation and control over Palestinian territory have been because of continued Palestinian militancy toward Israel. Any other country would deal with a similar threat in a similar manner. Some excesses and abuses have no doubt occurred, and these deserve criticism and correction, but this does not deny the right of Israel to defend itself against constant threat. As for the Nakba, that never would have happend if the arabs hadn't attacked Israel, and it was the attacking arab countries that advised Palestinian arabs to relocate, confident that the arabs would prevail and the Palestinian arabs could then return to their homes. Any relocation of arab residents by Israel was purely defensive in nature.
Israel for sometime is ready to let go of this 3 billion gradually
It is the Pentagon and American weapons industry that opposes
termination of the 3 billion because they know the numbers
Israel is the only country where American weapons are tested
in real war situations and as such are a desirable show
of long term experience is sought by potential buyers
all over the world
the services Israel is carrying out for the US
have to be priced
At the end of the day the 3 billion is a very good deal
for the US
While Peter and other idiots like TCinLA won’t acknowledge that the Palestinian’s mess is of their own doing and that they could have had their own country anytime for 70 years but instead continue teaching their children that one day they will succeed in driving the Jews into the sea — the Arab world is moving on. Today, there’s signs that Saudi Arabia is gearing up for normalization. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-and-saudi-arabia-said-in-us-brokered-talks-to-improve-relations/amp/
The current polemics aside- in Jewish psychology there is a category 'enemies of the Jews'. So Haman, Vespasian, Pharaoh, and Hitler are all Amalek- the Palestinians were viewed as Nazis and the Nazis are pure evil and pure evil has no legitimate POV. We were so determined to end the Diaspora that anything that got in the way, including millions of Palestinians, were brushed aside.
I think it's that simple.
I have found that my Muslim friends (and I know there are Christian Arabs) are just like my Jewish friends and family- far from being Nazis they are more like us than even the Western countries we've assimilated into
There's also the point that both Arabs and Jews are considered ethnic "Semites." So bigotry against either is indeed "anti-Semitism."
I wish that instead of resisting the parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa, more people would take them in a different spirit.
I campaigned against apartheid as a high school student and looking back now at the American debate in the 1980s, it strikes me that the anti-apartheid movement relied too much on a simplistic analogy with the US civil rights movement. We never acknowledged the most basic difference between the two cases: that whites in America were a majority but in South Africa a small minority. I don't recall any of us ever asking ourselves why the whites were behaving the way they did, much less coming up with the obvious answer: many of them thought that if and when blacks were given legal equality, they'd be exiled or annihilated.
That didn't happen but it wasn't an impossible outcome. There should have been more acknowledgement that ending apartheid carried risk: not just in the practical sense, but *moral* risk. Fighting injustice can sometimes lead to injustice, and I don't think people were sufficiently clear-eyed about that.
The analogy with Israel-Palestine ought to be obvious. I'm in favor of a one-state solution but I'm aware that most Israeli Jews look at the history of Lebanon (among other countries in the region) and assume it would end in disaster. And it might! There's no way to begin discussing the options seriously without conceding that even the best ones may fail.
If the South African comparison were made in that spirit, it might be more persuasive.
“ Abu Akleh was an iconic Palestinian journalist working in the West Bank—a territory where Jews enjoy citizenship, due process, free movement, and the ability to vote for the government that controls their lives. Meanwhile, Palestinians enjoy none of these rights. She was killed, according to eyewitnesses, by the army of the Jewish state. Yet according to Tishby, her killing highlights not bigotry against Palestinians but bigotry against Jews.”
In a word, Apartheid,