Our Zoom call this week, for paid subscribers, will be at our regular time: Noon EDT. Our guest will be Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford and author of the new book, Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab-Jew, which has garnered attention because of Shlaim’s claim that he has uncovered “
In the aftermath of the destruction of the Judean state in the first century of the common era, Jews have done very well and survived and thrived everywhere, except for China (The Chosen Few by Botticini and Ecksein). That said, we also know that the Jews have managed to suffer everywhere, again except for China. The Arab world is no exception (A History of Jewish Muslim Relation by Meddeb and Stora).
In Avi Shlaim’s case maybe he feels guilty living in the ivory tower at Oxford and yes he has creds as a scion of Iraqi Jews who fled Iraq. But the Jews of Iraq were already traumatized in 1941 when 180 Jews were massacred by Iraqi nationalists. And that was happening long before the Zionists could train their eyes on Iraq.
To suggest that Iraqi Jews needed the Zionists to create attacks in Iraq to get Iraqi Jews to leave is a little far-fetched sideshow, they were already leaving and continued to leave.
The initial Iraqi Jewish experience in Israel was horrific. Here were almost 100,000 Jews, whose wealth was stripped by the Iraqi government prior to departure for Israel, living in tents. I am sure Avi and others remembered the good old days in Iraq.
Today the Iraqi Jews, part of the 800,000 Arab Jews who were similarly exiled to Israel in the aftermath of Israel’s establishment are almost 60% of Israel’s Jewish population and they remember the good old days in their former Arab countries so well that they form the bulwark of the right wing anti-Arab government headed by Netanyahu.
Israeli historians Joseph Heller and Yehoshua Porath claimed Shlaim "misleads his readers with arguments that Israel had missed the opportunity for peace while the Arabs are strictly peace seekers". Benny Morris criticised Shlaim for having an anti-Israel and pro-Arab bias and distorted records to give a one-sided portrayal of history.
Peter...what's behind your motivation in always trying to find the bad in Israel?
Peter has recently had Bill DiBlasio- very pro Israel but couldn't really explain his positions. And Tom Friedman, who, in my view, has always seen Israel with rose colored glasses. Richard, I think this criticism is unwarranted.
Listening to you Today, Peter, I think you're still complicit with US Policy re your opinions of Putin and Russia!
As an unknown Canadian reaching an unusually high level of visibility at the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, I was questioned by the Secret Service the night President Ford won the nomination.
To my surprise it was not in some anteroom, but the Secret Service Agent led me right to the President's Podium, and questioned me in full view of the compressed crowd of delirious Republicans in the Lobby of the Crown Center Hotel below. They were looking up to the Secret Service restricted Mezannine with the President's podium set up, expecting the President to be standing there any minute.
What they saw was me, with shoulder length hair, beard, and wearing my trademark #13 jersey. Definitely a Revolutionary Image for anyone looking like that to be standing at the President's podium before or since Americans were celebrating their Revolution that year.
After the Republicans left town, The Kansas City Times published 2 Historical Records on that Period in my Curriculum Vitae, the 1st on September 13, 1976, with the followup on ALL SOULS DAY, November 2, 1976.
This is the confirming SIGN of the ALL SOULS DAY November 2, 1976 Times record, as shown in the 1983 movie THE DAY AFTER Kansas City was incinerated in a Nuclear Holocaust.
The movie could have been shot in any major American City, but the indisputable Facts are the Facts even if people don't like them.
The movie pauses at the very same picture frame published by The Kansas City Times 7 year to the MONTH earlier. Both Judaism and Christianity say 7 is God's number!
I do not agree that our failed military adventures abroad are responsible for the rise of Trump. Rather it is the 2008 market crash caused by massive bank fraud, the no-strings-attached trillion dollar bank bailouts, the millions of homeowners who lost their homes in foreclosures on top of widespread fraudulent foreclosure practices, the failure to prosecute the banksters, the rotten trade deals, and the destruction of our manufacturing base and jobs by corporate offshoring for lower wages that primarily fueled the rise of Trump and Trumpism.
As for our strong liberal democracy, it isn't strong and its liberalism is primarily neoliberalism. In particular, public opinion has no effect on public policy according to a recent study which is certainly consistent with what I see in the shameful failure to raise the minimum wage and provide Medicare for All/public option among other popular policies that inevitably fail in Congress because it's been captured by corporate interests. Supreme Court justices have been been exposed as grifting politicians, and the government has imposed a secret censorship regime with the full cooperation of private platforms. Grossly boated defense budgets provide a safe haven for $52,000 toilets and finance coups, wars, and color revolutions while food subsidies for the poor are cut.
As for Putin's despotic, dysfunctional regime, he at least enjoys massive popular support which Joe Biden does not. And the Russian economy has proved sufficiently strong and resilient to absorb the shocks of our ferocious illegal sanctions war which has backfired badly because our ruling class is bursting with dangerous, arrogant idiots.
My concern is that our militarized, belligerent foreign policy, which is being run by rabid neo-cons in the State Department, will continue to push U.S. hegemony in an emerging multipolar world until somebody drops a nuke.
Oh, that Atlantic article. I am so ashamed that my government has given Modi a hero’s welcome. We have to resist these horrible trends any way we can though I don’t know how. Everywhere you look people are destroying the basis for people to live their lives in peace and for what? I didn’t think this could happen when I was young. I thought people would get better, not worse. I don’t know why I thought this. Maybe because we had already learned so many lessons about the pointless destruction and harm caused by ethnic and racial hatred, and how the lies they were based on ultimately threaten everyone.
I mentioned the Russian American journalist Julia Ioffe earlier. She just came out with an article on the whole whole Progozhin/Putin debacle that’s different from some of the other sentiments going around. It’s interesting.
I don’t know where I saw this but there was a clip from somebody floating online who was once a figure in the Russian government expressing some of the doubts of the first paragraph (the article is paywalled). It makes sense. But of course it is also possible that this little episode will give someone else ideas. Still, it’s a very risky proposition truly unlikely to succeed so they’d have to be highly motivated and it’s not clear who would be that motivated given that a bunch of people weren’t super motivated to join Prigozhin in the first place.
I recall reading Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands. I recall always dutifully waiting to the end of each paragraph, because there awaiting my disbelief of what was in the paragraph that I just read was a footnote number that sent me to an unsparing detail the source of the atrocity I just read and thus could not be dismissed as unbelievable. Paragraph after paragraph always ended with a footnote. Each paragraph is a tutorial in inhumanity. I recall to this day one specific act of inhumanity that stood out and has remained lodged in my brain. I will not relate it here I can’t, but I have always warned as I have encouraged people to read this book that this book will challenge one’s faith.
Strange he was criticized for not separating his accounts of what befell the Jews from the other equally horrific acts recounted in this book. Amazing.
I read this many years ago, THE JEWS OF IRAQ by Naeim Giladi. It's his account of being an Iraqi Jewish Teenager at 18 in 1947 dreaming of The Promised Land.
Genesis 34 describes what happened when the Patriarchs saw The Promised Land for the 1st Time since the Promise was given to Abraham 230 years earlier.
The record shows it was freely offered to Jacob and the 11 Patriarchs to settle there, intermarry, and do business by the local king whose son was madly in love with Jacob's Daughter, Dinah willing to do anything to marry her including circumcision, as the Patriarchs demanded for such an arrangement with the Locals.
Reading recent analyses by Jewish writers on the Religious WAR developing between European Jews and Jews from Arab Countries in Israel Today, in retrospect, it now seems to be propitious.
I love Tim Snyder and excited to hear from Masha Gessen. Julia Ioffe has written some great pieces too, and I mention here for folks because her story on Putin’s personal history that she wrote for Puck News last year was an incredibly interesting piece on some of the historical and cultural traumas that make him tick. Certainly there are patterns we can all learn from. If we stay in our pride, we lose that opportunity.
Looking forward to Prof. Avi to see what additional info his research revealed about these types of incidents...I wonder how many of these "Affairs" are carried out these days! Maybe none, since now Israel acts with full impunity.
Curious to hear Shlaim’ take on the Baghdad bombings. That said, Iraqi Jews did face growing hostilities and persecution from the 1930s onward (or the threat of it at least), including the Farhud pogrom in 1941. Keep in mind that this backlash was largely in reaction to what was happening in Palestine, but it still wasn’t justified. This was after a period of prosperity and good coexistence for the Jews of the MENA countries for centuries. So there were a myriad of factors at play for the exodus for sure. Would the Iraqi Jews have stayed if the bombings didn’t take place? Hard to tell.
I don't disagree with your caution against American self-satisfaction or hubris in light of the recent events in Russia. I am wondering, though, what analysts/commentators you might recommend following going forward for insights as to what is unfolding in Russia.
i follow Timothy Snyder and Masha Gessen on Russia/Ukraine stuff
Richard, As you know, we have guests with a variety of views. You'll be happy to know that Benny Morris has agreed to join us sometime soon.
In the aftermath of the destruction of the Judean state in the first century of the common era, Jews have done very well and survived and thrived everywhere, except for China (The Chosen Few by Botticini and Ecksein). That said, we also know that the Jews have managed to suffer everywhere, again except for China. The Arab world is no exception (A History of Jewish Muslim Relation by Meddeb and Stora).
In Avi Shlaim’s case maybe he feels guilty living in the ivory tower at Oxford and yes he has creds as a scion of Iraqi Jews who fled Iraq. But the Jews of Iraq were already traumatized in 1941 when 180 Jews were massacred by Iraqi nationalists. And that was happening long before the Zionists could train their eyes on Iraq.
To suggest that Iraqi Jews needed the Zionists to create attacks in Iraq to get Iraqi Jews to leave is a little far-fetched sideshow, they were already leaving and continued to leave.
The initial Iraqi Jewish experience in Israel was horrific. Here were almost 100,000 Jews, whose wealth was stripped by the Iraqi government prior to departure for Israel, living in tents. I am sure Avi and others remembered the good old days in Iraq.
Today the Iraqi Jews, part of the 800,000 Arab Jews who were similarly exiled to Israel in the aftermath of Israel’s establishment are almost 60% of Israel’s Jewish population and they remember the good old days in their former Arab countries so well that they form the bulwark of the right wing anti-Arab government headed by Netanyahu.
Israeli historians Joseph Heller and Yehoshua Porath claimed Shlaim "misleads his readers with arguments that Israel had missed the opportunity for peace while the Arabs are strictly peace seekers". Benny Morris criticised Shlaim for having an anti-Israel and pro-Arab bias and distorted records to give a one-sided portrayal of history.
Peter...what's behind your motivation in always trying to find the bad in Israel?
Richard, we will have to ask Peter to invite Benny on a zoom, to debate.
Regarding Peter's motivation in always trying to find the bad in Israel. Nobody needs Peter to point that out, as it's out there for everyone to see.
Peter has recently had Bill DiBlasio- very pro Israel but couldn't really explain his positions. And Tom Friedman, who, in my view, has always seen Israel with rose colored glasses. Richard, I think this criticism is unwarranted.
Great and lucid response from Sean
Listening to you Today, Peter, I think you're still complicit with US Policy re your opinions of Putin and Russia!
As an unknown Canadian reaching an unusually high level of visibility at the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, I was questioned by the Secret Service the night President Ford won the nomination.
To my surprise it was not in some anteroom, but the Secret Service Agent led me right to the President's Podium, and questioned me in full view of the compressed crowd of delirious Republicans in the Lobby of the Crown Center Hotel below. They were looking up to the Secret Service restricted Mezannine with the President's podium set up, expecting the President to be standing there any minute.
What they saw was me, with shoulder length hair, beard, and wearing my trademark #13 jersey. Definitely a Revolutionary Image for anyone looking like that to be standing at the President's podium before or since Americans were celebrating their Revolution that year.
After the Republicans left town, The Kansas City Times published 2 Historical Records on that Period in my Curriculum Vitae, the 1st on September 13, 1976, with the followup on ALL SOULS DAY, November 2, 1976.
This is one dated SIGN of the TIMES: https://ray032.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/kansas-city-times-november-2-1976-all-souls-day-2.jpg
This is the confirming SIGN of the ALL SOULS DAY November 2, 1976 Times record, as shown in the 1983 movie THE DAY AFTER Kansas City was incinerated in a Nuclear Holocaust.
The movie could have been shot in any major American City, but the indisputable Facts are the Facts even if people don't like them.
The movie pauses at the very same picture frame published by The Kansas City Times 7 year to the MONTH earlier. Both Judaism and Christianity say 7 is God's number!
https://youtu.be/q7J8eMyK1DI
https://rayjc.com/2013/09/01/signs-of-the-times/
https://rayjc.com/2022/04/13/us-politicians-are-sleepwalking-toward-the-nuclear-abyss/
https://rayjc.com/2022/12/13/all-souls-day-to-remembrance-day/
TODAY is the 36 Day of my 80th Year. Moses the Law Giver was sent to Pharaoh to say 'let my People go' when he was 80.
The God of Abraham who Lives Today, sent Moses to Pharaoh but also hardened the heart of Pharaoh, so he would not listen to Moses!
Everything is Possible! THE DAY AFTER will be TOO LATE!
I do not agree that our failed military adventures abroad are responsible for the rise of Trump. Rather it is the 2008 market crash caused by massive bank fraud, the no-strings-attached trillion dollar bank bailouts, the millions of homeowners who lost their homes in foreclosures on top of widespread fraudulent foreclosure practices, the failure to prosecute the banksters, the rotten trade deals, and the destruction of our manufacturing base and jobs by corporate offshoring for lower wages that primarily fueled the rise of Trump and Trumpism.
As for our strong liberal democracy, it isn't strong and its liberalism is primarily neoliberalism. In particular, public opinion has no effect on public policy according to a recent study which is certainly consistent with what I see in the shameful failure to raise the minimum wage and provide Medicare for All/public option among other popular policies that inevitably fail in Congress because it's been captured by corporate interests. Supreme Court justices have been been exposed as grifting politicians, and the government has imposed a secret censorship regime with the full cooperation of private platforms. Grossly boated defense budgets provide a safe haven for $52,000 toilets and finance coups, wars, and color revolutions while food subsidies for the poor are cut.
As for Putin's despotic, dysfunctional regime, he at least enjoys massive popular support which Joe Biden does not. And the Russian economy has proved sufficiently strong and resilient to absorb the shocks of our ferocious illegal sanctions war which has backfired badly because our ruling class is bursting with dangerous, arrogant idiots.
My concern is that our militarized, belligerent foreign policy, which is being run by rabid neo-cons in the State Department, will continue to push U.S. hegemony in an emerging multipolar world until somebody drops a nuke.
Oh, that Atlantic article. I am so ashamed that my government has given Modi a hero’s welcome. We have to resist these horrible trends any way we can though I don’t know how. Everywhere you look people are destroying the basis for people to live their lives in peace and for what? I didn’t think this could happen when I was young. I thought people would get better, not worse. I don’t know why I thought this. Maybe because we had already learned so many lessons about the pointless destruction and harm caused by ethnic and racial hatred, and how the lies they were based on ultimately threaten everyone.
I mentioned the Russian American journalist Julia Ioffe earlier. She just came out with an article on the whole whole Progozhin/Putin debacle that’s different from some of the other sentiments going around. It’s interesting.
https://puck.news/putin-vs-prigozhin-the-post-coup-report/?_cio_id=f6c60605f453e5e709&utm_campaign=The+Best+%26+The+Brightest+-+LEADS+%286%2F26%2F23%29&utm_content=The+Best+%26+The+Brightest+-+LEADS+%286%2F27%2F23%29&utm_medium=email_action&utm_source=customer.io&utm_term=f6c60605f453e5e709
I don’t know where I saw this but there was a clip from somebody floating online who was once a figure in the Russian government expressing some of the doubts of the first paragraph (the article is paywalled). It makes sense. But of course it is also possible that this little episode will give someone else ideas. Still, it’s a very risky proposition truly unlikely to succeed so they’d have to be highly motivated and it’s not clear who would be that motivated given that a bunch of people weren’t super motivated to join Prigozhin in the first place.
I recall reading Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands. I recall always dutifully waiting to the end of each paragraph, because there awaiting my disbelief of what was in the paragraph that I just read was a footnote number that sent me to an unsparing detail the source of the atrocity I just read and thus could not be dismissed as unbelievable. Paragraph after paragraph always ended with a footnote. Each paragraph is a tutorial in inhumanity. I recall to this day one specific act of inhumanity that stood out and has remained lodged in my brain. I will not relate it here I can’t, but I have always warned as I have encouraged people to read this book that this book will challenge one’s faith.
Strange he was criticized for not separating his accounts of what befell the Jews from the other equally horrific acts recounted in this book. Amazing.
I read this many years ago, THE JEWS OF IRAQ by Naeim Giladi. It's his account of being an Iraqi Jewish Teenager at 18 in 1947 dreaming of The Promised Land.
Genesis 34 describes what happened when the Patriarchs saw The Promised Land for the 1st Time since the Promise was given to Abraham 230 years earlier.
The record shows it was freely offered to Jacob and the 11 Patriarchs to settle there, intermarry, and do business by the local king whose son was madly in love with Jacob's Daughter, Dinah willing to do anything to marry her including circumcision, as the Patriarchs demanded for such an arrangement with the Locals.
Reading recent analyses by Jewish writers on the Religious WAR developing between European Jews and Jews from Arab Countries in Israel Today, in retrospect, it now seems to be propitious.
http://www.inminds.com/jews-of-iraq.html
I love Tim Snyder and excited to hear from Masha Gessen. Julia Ioffe has written some great pieces too, and I mention here for folks because her story on Putin’s personal history that she wrote for Puck News last year was an incredibly interesting piece on some of the historical and cultural traumas that make him tick. Certainly there are patterns we can all learn from. If we stay in our pride, we lose that opportunity.
Well said, again.
Looking forward to Prof. Avi to see what additional info his research revealed about these types of incidents...I wonder how many of these "Affairs" are carried out these days! Maybe none, since now Israel acts with full impunity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
Fantastic analysis for Americans, as usual. Amazing how Peter maintains his integrity.
Curious to hear Shlaim’ take on the Baghdad bombings. That said, Iraqi Jews did face growing hostilities and persecution from the 1930s onward (or the threat of it at least), including the Farhud pogrom in 1941. Keep in mind that this backlash was largely in reaction to what was happening in Palestine, but it still wasn’t justified. This was after a period of prosperity and good coexistence for the Jews of the MENA countries for centuries. So there were a myriad of factors at play for the exodus for sure. Would the Iraqi Jews have stayed if the bombings didn’t take place? Hard to tell.
I don't disagree with your caution against American self-satisfaction or hubris in light of the recent events in Russia. I am wondering, though, what analysts/commentators you might recommend following going forward for insights as to what is unfolding in Russia.