Mr Winters, I beg your pardon: I am not confused, my statement was perfectly clear (I am a writer and I do know how to express ideas) and, not least, I did address key points in what you had said.
I did, for instance, give you a list of countries that commit serious human rights abuses, in which I included the Arab countries. Perhaps I should have stated explicitly that these human rights abuses are frequently in connection with privileging one group over another but I assumed that you knew I was referencing this. Even amongst the Arab countries, however, they are not all equally evil in this respect. For example, Jordan is better than Saudi Arabia, Iran or Iraq. And no that is not a meaningless distinction: I could have an actual life in Jordan but not in Saudi, Iran or Iraq.
Other countries that fall into the category of discriminatory in terms of their actual policies toward minorities include: Myanmar, Hungary, Brazil, India, and Israel (in the latter, the citizenship law makes it official). Then there are the countries where discrimination against minority groups is not official policy, built into the legal structure, but just the way the country runs. Some examples: the US, the UK, France (and of course many more). The key point where we disagree, I think, is that you see such "privileging" as inherent to the nation-state and universal amongst them whereas I do not see it as inherent or equally the case in all. I can tell you from my own lived experience that New Zealand and Germany are far better to their minorities than, for instance, the US or Israel (not to mention, of course, egregious violators of human rights of minorities such as Myanmar and China and Russia). So.... big conclusion: if not all states are equally bad in treating members of minority groups, then this is not an inevitable condition. In fact, preventing such discrimination is a major point in the "rule of law" in countries that are supposed to be both democratic and civilised. The whole point of the US is to be such a country, though it consistently fails to live up to those ideals. So, yes, to come back to your question: do I "have anything to say about the existence of the dozens of nation-states which privilege one group of people over another?" Hell, yes, I do: I think it stinks and it should be fought by every means of public pressure that exists, both within those nations and in international forums. and by all thoughtful citizens in those countries.
One other point: I have no idea why you assumed that I feel that "minority rights in the West are secure". The above paragraphs shows that I don't but I never ever said that or believed it. So why did you assume that I believed such nonsense? (There is a less polite 8 letter word that starts with "b" but let us stick with "nonsense".) And Peter is far too intelligent and knowledgeable to believe it either in my view though of course I have not read everything he has written but I would be amazed if he ever said or believed it.
Final point: I also never said that "nation states like Israel aren't needed". In the world we have, nation states exist and can be a good thing. But they should and can be civilised and decent to their citizens, all of them -- and should be. Or do you think that is too big an ask?
PS. Great news about Harvard changing its mind about Kenneth Roth! Oops, you don't think so? so sorry.
"do I "have anything to say about the existence of the dozens of nation-states which privilege one group of people over another?" Hell, yes, I do: I think it stinks and it should be fought by every means of public pressure that exists,.... I also never said that "nation states like Israel aren't needed". In the world we have, nation states exist and can be a good thing."
Classic anti-Zionist double talk. Nation-states by definition privilege one group of people over another, and if you don't believe me, name me one that doesn't. Just because some nation-states are better to minorities than others doesn't mean that privilege doesn't exist. All you proved in your diatribe is that Israel is no different than any other nation-state and better than a lot, making all of your whining and screaming about it earlier intellectually dishonest.
I agree, all nation states should be civilized and decent to their citizens. Clean up China, Russia, and Palestine and then you can come for the Jews.
The double-standards matter is the heart of the issue: you object, and quite rightly in my view, to a Palestinian state in which the Muslim religion and the rights of Muslims would be privileged at the expense of other people, including of course Jews (and Christians). That state of course does not yet exist so it is a hypothetical. Yet, you evidently quite approve that kind of bias and preference in the existing state of Israel favouring Jews at the expense of their minorities, principally Palestinians. You seem to argue that that is fully justified because only within the borders of such a discriminatory state would Jews be guaranteed protection. (This is pretty dubious morality even if it were true.) Yet you also claim that in the states of the "West" the rights of the minorities (including Jews) are "secure". So, which is it: are Jews safe or unsafe in countries other than Israel? My view of history, based on reading over 65 years and many, many conversations is that as soon as one privileges one group at the expense of others, you create a poisonous society. And that is what has been happening in Israel since the start of the Occupation in 1967. My strongest objection to your comment is its largely complete evasion of the main point that Peter was making: that historically, many anti-Semites have been Zionists, and for a variety of reasons. This has been true, from Balfour to Orban and it should make Jews plenty uncomfortable when people like Netanyahu seek the support of such people as Orban or Trump to support Israel. You also seem to misunderstand the basic point that one can criticise many things in Israel from the perspective of human rights violations without damning the country as a whole or wanting it to disappear or calling it "bad". Bringing in the bigotry of other groups, e.g. some black student unions, some Palestinian groups, is just pure "both sides-ism" and is an evasion of the question of whether human rights are being violated, and increasingly, in the state of Israel. My Israeli friends, incidentally, currently see Israel as heading down the path of Hungary, Turkey, and even Russia, towards becoming an ethno-nationalist state. Does this possibility not bother you at all or is everything that is done by the Jewish majority in Israel today justified on the basis of past atrocities against Jews?
Of course the state of Palestine exists, and it's as fascist and undemocratic as some of the worst countries in the world. Are you unfamiliar with the treatment of Christians by Hamas and Fatah? Look it up sometime.
There are dozens of nation-states in the world today. They all 'privilege one group at the expense of others.' If you consider them all to be 'poisonous societies', then get to work stripping all of them of their national character, then you can come for the Jews. You can start with the 23 Arab states. Good luck.
Oh, tut, tut, tut, Mr Winters, this is a tetchy, indeed nasty, and intemperate response from you to my comments. Indeed, I am well aware how awful Hamas and Fatah (in different but overlapping ways) are and, indeed, if either was to be in charge of a true Palestinian state, the results would be awful and well deserving of condemnation, as indeed their quasi-governments already receive, including from Human Rights Watch under Kenneth Roth's leadership -- but we don't want to discuss HRW do we because then we would have to discuss the Harvard business (on which you have well expressed your views)? But you are quite wrong if you regard either Gaza or the West bank (under Fatah) as either one or two true national states. They are not because of their tight control under Israel, as you must know. If you don't, you can look up those uncomfortable facts. (Gaza, for instance, is often regarded as the "biggest outdoor prison" and that is not because of Hamas but because of Israel's control.)
Again, your position comes down to "they all do it" (human rights violations) as an excuse for what Israel does to the Palestinians within its own borders, in the West Bank, and, indirectly in Gaza. You are of course right that there are no countries in the world that are without fault concerning minority rights but instead of expressing concern and regret that is the case, you want to use that fact to justify what is happening in Israel. What you miss, of course, is that it is matters of degree in suppression of human rights that matter. At the top of the scale in barbarity are China, North Korea, Russia, Myanmar, lower down are the US, UK, India, and Israel, the Arab States, and near the other end, countries like Iceland, Luxembourg and a few others. Of course one can argue about the relative rankings but I would be happy to agree with you that the scale of violations in Israel is less than in China or Russia, for instance. But that should not induce complacency or indifference about what happens in Israel, should it? But then again, you do not really care about human rights do you? I judge that from your comment about "All Lives Matter bullshit".
I have written this in haste and I am sure that, with time, I could have fashioned it into something better but this will have to do. You were so kind as to close your comment with some advice to me so let me reciprocate the favour: I urge you to convert your anger and bile into doing something constructive to help fight the wave of growing antisemitism in the US. You are not aware of such? Well, it is not hard to find the information about this trend. You could start, though not finish, by Googling "Tree of Life Synagogue". After you have done this research, I would urge you to re-evaluate your conclusion that minority rights in the "West" are "secure". (Of course, if you were willing to look also at the situation of Afro-Americans and Asian Americans in the US too, you might reach an even darker conclusion than if you just concentrate on anti-Semitism.)
I cannot say that I have enjoyed this exchange but it has been interesting. Please do not reply. I will say good-bye to you and wish you good luck in your personal life (if not in the furtherance of your views on the Israel-Palestine situation.) Yours sincerely, Adam Wilkins (my very non-Jewish surname by the way is from my stepfather but in ancestry I am 100% Ashkenazi Jewish and that is an important part of my self-perceived identity.)
I can tell this comment was written in haste, despite its length, because you didn't address anything I actually said. We were discussing states that privilege one group over another. I pointed out that there are 23 Arab states that privilege Arabs over others. You said nothing about that.
You seem to be confused. You and Peter are supposed to be the ones who think minority rights in the West are secure, so nation-states like Israel aren't needed. I think you proved my point for me by bringing up the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, and I thank you for it.
Do you have anything to say about the existence of the dozens of nation-states which all privilege one group of people over another? Anything at all?
The Jews of Western Europe also did not want those Eastern European shtetl Jews increasingly fleeing progroms, to come to the West. They discouraged them to the point of paying them to go back. Many perished this way, up to and including the Holocaust. Another way was to finance their settling in Palestine, through buying land from absentee
landlords and underwriting the establishment of the “yshuv”, the settlement, see the extensive Rothschild involvement. The first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, who made an enormous effort to create the state, without him it would not exist, had a total disdain for its people and whenever he could, stayed in London. There was no thought given to whether the land could accommodate the people, 500 villages were destroyed and 700000 people were displaced in the Nakba, replaced by 700,000 Jews, to create a majority. In the long run, between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, Jews are no longer a majority, with all the implications.
I agreed with your comments completely and am pretty appalled by "Winters" comments below in their blindness, double-standards and hypocrisy.
The one thing that I think you left out in your commentary was the evangelical Christian right's support of Israel because they hope that Israel will bring on Armageddon and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (or something like that). It is all too loopy for words but totally against what honest and idealistic Zionists hope for and want, a viable and at least partially democratic state where Jewish people can live and thrive. For Zionists, this nutty Christian fringe is the strange bedfellows syndrome writ large.
A bunch of things wrong with this line of thinking, Peter.
First of all, Zionism is necessary to secure the rights of Jews in the Middle East. Israel is surrounded by fascistic Muslim Arab countries that oppress and abuse all of their national minorities, including Jews when they had them. In the West, minority rights are secure and a state is not needed in order to protect minorities. The two situations are not the same. American Zionists are not contradicting themselves when they say the US should remain egalitarian and Israel should remain Jewish any more than American Palestinian nationalists are when they say the same thing about the US while remaining silent about Palestine's Arab Muslim character.
Your argument that because some anti-Semites use Israel as a model for what they want and therefore that makes Israel bad is specious. There have been Black student unions on college campuses for decades without an issue. Some bad faith alt right students in 2015 started going around calling for "White Student Unions" on multiple college campuses. They, like the anti-Semites you mentioned, used Black student unions as a model. But they were decried as racist but Black student unions still continue today because white people are a dominant majority and Black people, like Jews, are a marginalized minority. See the difference?
As always, your comments are totally hypocritical when applied to your beloved Palestine. Palestine gets a ton of support from anti-Semites and is also seeking to create a country owned by one dominant ethnic, racial and religious group. Can we see criticism from you about Palestinian nationalism specifically (none of your typical 'All Lives Matter' bullshit) and anti-Semitism going hand and hand? I won't hold my breath.
“Israel is surrounded by fascistic Muslim Arab countries that oppress and abuse all of their national minorities, including Jews when they had them.”
You say this as if Israel is the only goody two shoes in the Middle East. Doesn’t Israel oppress and abuse its Palestinian minority? And if these Arab countries are so bad, why does Israel want friendly relations with them?
"Your argument that because some anti-Semites use Israel as a model for what they want and therefore that makes Israel bad is specious."
Winters, I don't believe you have correctly characterized Peter's argument. Nowhere here or in his Jewish Currents piece do I see him suggest that Israel is bad (or "bad"). He's exploring a correlation between pro-Zionism and anti-Semitism that is widespread historically and geographically, and discussing how such antisemitic pro-Zionism's roots lie in a broader commitment to ethnic-supermacist nationalism. If there is a problem with Israel, based on this view, it is with its tilt towards ethnic-supremacism, not with its nationalism (to the degree that "nationalism" celebrates the political nation-state rather than an ethnic identity).
I do agree with you that the case of Israel is unique, in that the Israeli nation-state is premised on the goal of creating an ethnic refuge (and I hold a Zionist view of Israel's legitimacy for this reason). I don't think Peter addresses that aspect in this argument.
I agree too that "Palestine gets a ton of support from anti-Semites," but I also agree with Peter that by far the lion's share of that tonnage goes towards Israel. Right wing antisemitism is virutally never pro-Palestinian: antisemitic Evangelicals, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists have absolutely no interest in supporting Palestinians. Left wing support for Palestinians, as Peter's essay argues, tends to be more anti-Zionist than antisemitic (or, I think more often in the US, anti-Likudnik). The financial element of "support" comes almost entirely from the Right and to Israel (although sometimes governments providing high levels of support are Left-leaning).
I'd add that I don't think it's accurate to say that Palestinian nationalists are "seeking to create a country owned by one dominant ethnic, racial and religious group," although that might well be the result if they attained their goals. Most Palestinian nationalists are focused on attaining political self-determination for their territory of residence, not on excluding non-Palestinians from that territory. (This invites unproductively complicated argument because of the history and nature of Israeli settlements, and my last statement may seem untrue if those become the focus, but I think if you look more broadly the general point holds, although to the degree that Palestinian goals move on to focus on the right of return it will not--which is why my own ideal is a two-state, non-exclusionary outcome, with the right of return mooted.)
Robert, Peter has a long history of being anti-Zionist and anti-Israel's existence as a Jewish state. You can read all of his many writings on the topic for evidence, but in this one post he says "Israel is built around the idea of privileging one particular ethno-religious group: Jews." As a good progressive, Peter is clearly opposed to such an idea.
You're factually incorrect that right wing anti-Semitism is virtually never pro-Palestinian. For one thing, Muslim anti-Semitism is right wing and groups like Hamas, the Iranian government and Islamic Jihad are right wing and anti-Semitic, obviously. For another, in the West, right wing anti-Semites are in fact pro-Palestinian or at least anti-Israel (as the two terms are interchangeable). For example, David Duke has repeatedly tweeted 'Free Palestine' and endorsements of BDS.
As for Palestinian nationalists, read Palestine's constitution. It makes it clear Palestine is an Arab Muslim state for Arab Muslims.
Thanks for the reply, Winters. I think that, indeed, "Israel is built around the idea of privileging one particular ethno-religious group: Jews," as Peter says. But the meaning of "privilege" has both an external and internal meaning. The external meaning is that only Jews have the right to make aliyah, and that is intrinsic to Zionism. The internal meaning is that Jews have the privilege of exclusive rights within Israel, rights that others do not have or have only in truncated form. I cannot imagine that Peter's statement referred to this second aspect as foundational to Zionism, since it is directly counter to the Zionism of Hertzl, which was dominant at Israel's founding.
I wondered as I typed before whether you'd raise the issue of Muslim antisemitism in governments we'd consider rightwing. I thought it would be better not to get into those weeds, but since we're there I think the best response I can give is to grant your point, while also noting that there is no commonality between the "Right" in those countries and the Right outside the Arab world.
As for David Duke, you took me by surprise and I have to grant your point. However, I have spent a great deal of time reading white nationalist tracts and on dedicated white nationalist platforms, and I do not recall encountering other instances. There may be ones I have not encountered, like these statements of Duke's--I don't follow Twitter--but my guess is that you've found an outlier. (If I were more conscientious and had more time I'd fire up my VPN and revisit a range of dedicated sites and toxic chan discussion boards to see whether I can find more evidence that supports you, but I don't have the stomach for it right now.)
The Palestinian Constitution says, "Palestinians shall be equal before the law and the judiciary, without distinction based upon race, sex, color, religion, political views or disability" (I'm quoting Article 9). How meaningful that is can be discussed, but I believe the text does not support your inference that the Constution makes clear the goal is for a state exclusively for Arab Muslims.
How convenient to the narrative that one of the most prominent right wing anti-Semites out there is 'an outlier'.
Palestinian Constitution: "Palestine is part of the larger Arab world, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab nation. Arab unity is an objective that the Palestinian people shall work to achieve..... Islam is the official religion in Palestine....The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation."
Well, that convenience factor could work either way, Winter. But I have to acknowledge my overstatement and the validity of your response. However, you much overstate David Duke's position in white nationalism. He is an emblem of past leadership, but leadership has passed on to other senior figures, like Jared Taylor, Kevin MacDonald and Greg Johnson, and junior ones like Andrew Anglin, Thomas Rousseau, Richard Spencer, and Nick Fuentes.
I cannot prove a negative through research online, but I'm not finding similar statements from most other prominent white nationalists. I did, however, find a 2014 quote that I think expresses a clear rationale for white nationalist support of the Palestinian cause from Greg Johnson, on his "Counter Currents" magazine site (I don't recommend going there).
-- "But ultimately, white interests and Palestinian interests do not coincide. Palestinians, quite naturally, want their country back. They want to send the Jews back whence they came. As a White Nationalist, I want all our Jews to go to Israel, and that means that I want Israel to stay put. What about Palestinian self-determination? I support a Palestinian homeland, right next to the Jewish homeland, because I want to send the Palestinian diaspora home as well."
I expect that's the sort of idea Duke had in mind. If you want to call that pro-Palestinian, fair enough. But it is not a call to recognize that the Palestinian rights have been unjustly suppressed; it supports Palestinians because they have been suppressed specifically by Jews. (Notice that Johnson manages also to voice support for Israel's continued existence as well, precisely in the terms Peter describes. Johnson supports the existence of Israel to quaratine Jews, just as he supports the existence of Palestine to quarantine Palestinians.)
I know the phrases you based your Constitution comment on. Having an official religion and expressing solidarity with the Arab world is not the same as excluding those of other religions and excluding non-Arabs, as the clause I cited demonstrates. When you referred to the Palestinian goal as "owning" the state of Palestine and said that the Constitution made clear that it would be "an Arab Muslim state for Arab Muslims," I took you to mean it pejoritively, as excluding others or denying their rights. That seems to me inconsistent with what the Constitution actually says. If you meant to say that the Constitution said that Palestine would be a homeland for Palestinian Arabs governed under laws aligned with Muslim tradition, while accommodating people of other races, religions, and political views, that would be fine. I think it would, however, weaken the overall points you were hoping to make because it's a somewhat Hertzlian goal. (To be clear, many states with fine constitutions egregiously violate them routinely, so I don't put much stock in anything the current draft says.)
I disagree with " in the West, minority rights are secure and a state is not needed in order to protect minorities. The two situations are not the same". I believe the Jim Crow Laws propagated all through the Southern U.S.from the moment that emancipation for slaves was declared, would contradict your statement.
It's 2023, not the 1960s. Jim Crow laws don't exist anymore.
But if your point is that even in the United States, minorities aren't completely protected and are still at risk, then you're agreeing with me, not Peter. He's the one saying every country in the world needs to be like the US, egalitarian in name but still containing entrenched systematic racism.
Thank you for these comments. This is a true and unique understanding. Revealing. Where I feel caught is that, as a Jew and a "Child of Holocaust Survivors" and born as a displaced person in Munich -- I do feel deep inside of me that we Jews need a Jewish State. I don't want us to ever again be in the situation we were before, during and after WWII when we we had nowhere to go and we were slaughtered. At the same time, I feel for the Israeli Arabs/Palestinians. I do not want to be a second class citizen in the U.S. How to reconcile these intense knowings and feelings? Peter, your thoughts?
Diana--I understand your fears. I feel them myself. But I've come to the view that our safety is best secured through liberal democracy and a system based on equality under the law. I believe that legal inequality involves violence against Palestinians that ultimately also endangers us. I make that argument here. Best, Peter https://jewishcurrents.org/yavne-a-jewish-case-for-equality-in-israel-palestine
So Jewish safety is best secured in the United States, a country that kept out Jews during WWII and recently elected Trump, who is an anti-Semite? Interesting viewpoint, Peter.
Diana, don't let Peter and the rest of the mouth breathers gaslight you. Jews have every right to self-determine in a state of their own in their indigenous homeland. Your feelings for the Palestinians are admirable, but they are not reciprocated. Jews will never again be helpless minorities living under the yoke of an uncaring majority. Anyone who doesn't like it can suck an egg.
"Indigenous" describes a group of people native to a specific region. In other words, it refers to people who lived there BEFORE colonists or settlers arrived, defined new borders, and began to occupy the land. Considering that the majority of what are now Israeli Jews MOVED to Palestine, either before 1948 to settle kibbutzim or post Nakba...they cannot be considered Indigenous, or native, they can only be considered colonial settlers furthering the ends of European White Supremacy and the Anti-Semitism that comes hand in hand with it.
"Today, Jews whose family immigrated from European countries and the Americas, on their paternal line, constitute the largest single group among Israeli Jews and consist of about 3,000,000[59] people living in Israel. About 1,200,000 of them are descended from or are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who returned from the diaspora after the fall of the Former Soviet Union 1991 (about 300,000 of them are not considered to be Jewish under Jewish law). Most of the other 1,800,000 are descended from the first Zionist settlers in the Land of Israel, as well as Holocaust survivors and their descendants, with an additional 200,000 having immigrated or descended from immigrants from English-speaking countries and South America."
They simply cannot be referred to as Indigenous, it is an inaccurate appropriation of the word, regardless of what Judaism teaches you about being Chosen and entitled to a land that your ancestors maybe might have lived in thousands of years ago. As Edwin states; not you, Lord Balfour, or any other mortal, living or dead, seems to have the messianic qualities called for to bring the Jews back to Palestine, and all innocent blood shed along the way is against God.
Correction: Jewish people lived in Palestine before colonizers (the British) & settler colonizers (present day Israelis) arrived. THOSE Jewish people, along with the Christians & Muslims, who were ALL Palestinians, are Indigenous. THE Jewish people as a whole do not fit within the definition of Indigenous. Settler colonists who have come from all over Europe cannot possibly be Indigenous to Palestine.
Take for example, the likelihood of skin cancer amongst the Jewish population of the area, versus the lack of it amongst the Indigenous population whose bodies have adapted to the conditions of the regions over many generations.
"Despite this good news, an average of 163 new melanoma patients are diagnosed in Israel – 98 percent of them among Jews – and 15 die from the disease every month. Even though many Arabs work outdoors, their risk of melanoma is much lower because they do not sunbathe as much and tend to cover themselves up in the sun. They also generally have darker skin that protects them and rarely go to tanning parlors, where UV exposure is dangerous." -Taken from a 2021 Israeli newspaper article
Odd that an Indigenous population would be so at odds with their natural environment, as that would seemingly be against everything science has learned about evolution and the delicate balance of ecosystems that it produces... Perhaps you are suggesting God made a mistake matching up the Chosen people with their alleged homeland's ecology? Dangerous territory for someone whose worldview is apparently embedded in adherence to religious zealotry.
It is quite interesting to hear you say that you do not want to be a second class citizen in the US, do you feel that you are, and if so, that it is because you are Jewish? (I assume you live in the US) To me, this implies that you are not satisfied with your social standing, and would like to be a 1st class citizen in a Jewish state (which you deeply feel is necessary). But how can a Jewish supremacist state be achieved without the subjugation of any non-Jews? 1st class implies that there are lower classes, and in order for one group of people to be at the "top", there must be others trodden upon, in this case the Palestinians, the indigenous inhabitants of the current "state of israel". This seems to be edging dangerously into ethnofascism, exactly one of the conditions that led to the situations before WWII that you seem concerned with your people experiencing again. I see you "feel for" the Palestinians, but I wonder if it bothers you that Palestinians have been slaughtered for close to 8 decades, precisely so that Jews can be first class citizens of a land that was already inhabited, or do you only truly care when the people that are suffering are of your own? I do indeed wonder what Peter will say.
Mr Winters, If you took what I wrote as a "diatribe" and reduce my comments to "whining and screaming", you either did not read what I said with any understanding or you simply dismiss my comments because you cannot answer them. If the former, I would urge you to take a remedial reading course so that you learn to read with better comprehension. In terms of helpful further advice, I would also urge you to try to become a more civilised person. You need to learn how to disagree about issues without going for the ad hominem attack, which is what you have now done several times with me. Please do not take that comment as an ad hominem attack itself: it is a straight up personal criticism of someone who is not a very nice person -- and who could do a lot better. Good-bye Mr Winters.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Adam. I'll be here whenever you're able to come up with a nation-state that doesn't privilege one group of people over another.
Peter, I hope that in your conversation with Yair Rosenburg you will ask him to confront the evident reality that Israel’s expulsion and oppression of the Palestinian people in order privilege Jews and the constant defamation by the Zionist Jewish establishment of those who criticize Israel as being “antisemitic” are two of the main causes of growth of anti-Jewish sentiment (i.e. antisemitism) in the world, or at least in the United States, today. One only needs to think of Jewish Voice for Peace to know that this new kind of distaste for Jews as a group is not justified, but the mainstream Jewish organizations that remain Zionist and either defend Israel right or wrong, or wring their hands and oppose actions that could force Israel to change its behavior, share the blame for this new and appalling strain of antisemitism.
Thanks to Peter for focusing on historical truths that we need to understand in order to combat the growth of antisemitism. Thanks also to Adam Wilkins and Robert Eno for correcting Mr. Winters’ mischaracterization of the points that Peter was making and Mr. Winters’ mischaracterization of Palestinian demands for humane treatment and equal rights as a call to create state that would that would subject Jews to a regime such that which Israel imposes on them.
More fundamentally Mr. Winters seeks to justify Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, in taking their land, freedom and identity as a people from them in a settler colonialist enterprise by falsely equating the creation of the State of Israel and srael’s treatment of the Palestinians with the treatment of Jews in other Middle Eastern states, where Jews, Muslims and Christians often lived in harmony until the creation of the Jewish state in Palestine led Arab governments to expel their Jewish residents to Israel. One could add this to Peter’s list of antisemitic motivations for sending Jews to Israel, this one largely provoked by the creation of State of Israel itself.
It is a corruption of the language and an insult to intelligence to equate the creation of the state of Israel and the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their country and their subsequent oppression with the practice of other states in “privileging one group of people over another.” A close case is the Chinese treatment of the Uyghers, which the world has rightly condemned, though even Mr. Adams rather mysteriously judges Israel to be lower down than China on the scale of barbarity.
WOW. Many of your weekly Topics have led me to think, question myself and want to share with others..Jews and Non Jews alike. However this one really blew me away. Reading Lord Montagu's memo was simply an earth shattering experience. His warnings about what will happen to the Christians and Mohammedans (?) Seems to have been brushed aside. It is quite obvious that this man saw himself as a Brit through and through yet recognized the very true existence of Anti Semitism. His suggestion that the British Armed forces should establish a Foreign Legion as opposed to a "Jewish Legion" made total sense.
Mr Winters, You are clearly unreachable and so trying to have an exchange of ideas with you is pointless. But there may be other readers of "The Binary Notebook" who have followed our exchange and so this reply addresses your short comment but is really for their eyes.
In your comment of only 34 words, you make three mistakes. First, there is the error in your reading: I never said that there were any countries with a spotless human rights record. In fact, most of my two earlier messages dealt with just that fact; there is a wide spectrum of abuses across the globe and no country is perfect and many are in the range of bad-to-atrocious . But you can barely acknowledge that I said so, which reflects your second error, one of logic. You seem to imply that if all countries "privilege" one group at the expense of others, that somehow makes them all equivalent. Wrong! The extent of de-privileging, which correlates with the extent of human rights violations, does make a difference to the amount of evil performed and suffering inflicted. To be black or Jewish or Muslim in Iceland, New Zealand, Germany -- not the exclusive list, of course, of relatively non-problematical countries -- is in general far less fraught than to have any of those identities in the US, the UK and (yes) Israel (let alone China, North Korea, China for one or more of those ethnicities). Though you will not utter the phrase "human rights" (except to label it as "bullshit") you sort of in a backhanded way, admit, for example, that China and Russia are pretty bad that way and that that does make a difference. Your third mistake is moral: you want to excuse what Israel does to Palestinians within the country itself and on the West Bank and in Gaza because "all countries" do it ("privileging" one group against others.) Wrong again! That is the morality of the gutter not where civilised people should live or the standards they should uphold if they genuinely want to make the world a better place, where no one is punished for his religion, skin colour, ethnic group.
One last point: in his latest podcast, Peter uses the word "distraction" to characterise the discussion over the Kenneth Roth affair at Harvard when the real issue is human rights violations that HRW has called out, in Israel and many other countries. Your correspondence with me amounts to a similar distraction from that issue, cloaking your unwillingness to acknowledge that Israel is indeed an apartheid state, as classified by at least three major human rights organisations (even if is different in the details of its apartheid from the government and society of the old South Africa.)
Indeed, you are exactly describing the tactics of Zionism and the colonial steed it rides in on, thank you. And yes, I do have a say in how Zionisms incredible distortion and appropriation of Judaism affects the Palestinian population that is currently materially imperiled (already 17 murdered, 3 of which were children, in 2023) rather than conceptually, (anti semitism has not murdered any Israelis or Jews thus far this year as far I am aware), as I, a Palestinian, am in mortal danger perpetually simply for the sake of Jewish supremacy. I don't care who you are or what beliefs you have that govern your own life, but once those beliefs bleed into fascism of any kind they become a problem. So yes, this actually is my business because unlike Hasbara trolls & Zionist keyboard warriors whose worldview comes from distorted media, brainwashing (just ask Gideon Levy, or wait... let me guess... he is a self hating Jew too?), and a lifetime of being told they are better and more important than everyone else...this is a matter of life or death for me and my family. I would honestly love more than anything for this NOT to be my business but sadly, it is.
i think Ken emailed it to you. If he didn't give me your email
thanks for sharing it
thanks
Mr Winters, I beg your pardon: I am not confused, my statement was perfectly clear (I am a writer and I do know how to express ideas) and, not least, I did address key points in what you had said.
I did, for instance, give you a list of countries that commit serious human rights abuses, in which I included the Arab countries. Perhaps I should have stated explicitly that these human rights abuses are frequently in connection with privileging one group over another but I assumed that you knew I was referencing this. Even amongst the Arab countries, however, they are not all equally evil in this respect. For example, Jordan is better than Saudi Arabia, Iran or Iraq. And no that is not a meaningless distinction: I could have an actual life in Jordan but not in Saudi, Iran or Iraq.
Other countries that fall into the category of discriminatory in terms of their actual policies toward minorities include: Myanmar, Hungary, Brazil, India, and Israel (in the latter, the citizenship law makes it official). Then there are the countries where discrimination against minority groups is not official policy, built into the legal structure, but just the way the country runs. Some examples: the US, the UK, France (and of course many more). The key point where we disagree, I think, is that you see such "privileging" as inherent to the nation-state and universal amongst them whereas I do not see it as inherent or equally the case in all. I can tell you from my own lived experience that New Zealand and Germany are far better to their minorities than, for instance, the US or Israel (not to mention, of course, egregious violators of human rights of minorities such as Myanmar and China and Russia). So.... big conclusion: if not all states are equally bad in treating members of minority groups, then this is not an inevitable condition. In fact, preventing such discrimination is a major point in the "rule of law" in countries that are supposed to be both democratic and civilised. The whole point of the US is to be such a country, though it consistently fails to live up to those ideals. So, yes, to come back to your question: do I "have anything to say about the existence of the dozens of nation-states which privilege one group of people over another?" Hell, yes, I do: I think it stinks and it should be fought by every means of public pressure that exists, both within those nations and in international forums. and by all thoughtful citizens in those countries.
One other point: I have no idea why you assumed that I feel that "minority rights in the West are secure". The above paragraphs shows that I don't but I never ever said that or believed it. So why did you assume that I believed such nonsense? (There is a less polite 8 letter word that starts with "b" but let us stick with "nonsense".) And Peter is far too intelligent and knowledgeable to believe it either in my view though of course I have not read everything he has written but I would be amazed if he ever said or believed it.
Final point: I also never said that "nation states like Israel aren't needed". In the world we have, nation states exist and can be a good thing. But they should and can be civilised and decent to their citizens, all of them -- and should be. Or do you think that is too big an ask?
PS. Great news about Harvard changing its mind about Kenneth Roth! Oops, you don't think so? so sorry.
"do I "have anything to say about the existence of the dozens of nation-states which privilege one group of people over another?" Hell, yes, I do: I think it stinks and it should be fought by every means of public pressure that exists,.... I also never said that "nation states like Israel aren't needed". In the world we have, nation states exist and can be a good thing."
Classic anti-Zionist double talk. Nation-states by definition privilege one group of people over another, and if you don't believe me, name me one that doesn't. Just because some nation-states are better to minorities than others doesn't mean that privilege doesn't exist. All you proved in your diatribe is that Israel is no different than any other nation-state and better than a lot, making all of your whining and screaming about it earlier intellectually dishonest.
I agree, all nation states should be civilized and decent to their citizens. Clean up China, Russia, and Palestine and then you can come for the Jews.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/19/harvard-kenneth-roth-fellowship-israel-criticism?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
The double-standards matter is the heart of the issue: you object, and quite rightly in my view, to a Palestinian state in which the Muslim religion and the rights of Muslims would be privileged at the expense of other people, including of course Jews (and Christians). That state of course does not yet exist so it is a hypothetical. Yet, you evidently quite approve that kind of bias and preference in the existing state of Israel favouring Jews at the expense of their minorities, principally Palestinians. You seem to argue that that is fully justified because only within the borders of such a discriminatory state would Jews be guaranteed protection. (This is pretty dubious morality even if it were true.) Yet you also claim that in the states of the "West" the rights of the minorities (including Jews) are "secure". So, which is it: are Jews safe or unsafe in countries other than Israel? My view of history, based on reading over 65 years and many, many conversations is that as soon as one privileges one group at the expense of others, you create a poisonous society. And that is what has been happening in Israel since the start of the Occupation in 1967. My strongest objection to your comment is its largely complete evasion of the main point that Peter was making: that historically, many anti-Semites have been Zionists, and for a variety of reasons. This has been true, from Balfour to Orban and it should make Jews plenty uncomfortable when people like Netanyahu seek the support of such people as Orban or Trump to support Israel. You also seem to misunderstand the basic point that one can criticise many things in Israel from the perspective of human rights violations without damning the country as a whole or wanting it to disappear or calling it "bad". Bringing in the bigotry of other groups, e.g. some black student unions, some Palestinian groups, is just pure "both sides-ism" and is an evasion of the question of whether human rights are being violated, and increasingly, in the state of Israel. My Israeli friends, incidentally, currently see Israel as heading down the path of Hungary, Turkey, and even Russia, towards becoming an ethno-nationalist state. Does this possibility not bother you at all or is everything that is done by the Jewish majority in Israel today justified on the basis of past atrocities against Jews?
Of course the state of Palestine exists, and it's as fascist and undemocratic as some of the worst countries in the world. Are you unfamiliar with the treatment of Christians by Hamas and Fatah? Look it up sometime.
There are dozens of nation-states in the world today. They all 'privilege one group at the expense of others.' If you consider them all to be 'poisonous societies', then get to work stripping all of them of their national character, then you can come for the Jews. You can start with the 23 Arab states. Good luck.
Oh, tut, tut, tut, Mr Winters, this is a tetchy, indeed nasty, and intemperate response from you to my comments. Indeed, I am well aware how awful Hamas and Fatah (in different but overlapping ways) are and, indeed, if either was to be in charge of a true Palestinian state, the results would be awful and well deserving of condemnation, as indeed their quasi-governments already receive, including from Human Rights Watch under Kenneth Roth's leadership -- but we don't want to discuss HRW do we because then we would have to discuss the Harvard business (on which you have well expressed your views)? But you are quite wrong if you regard either Gaza or the West bank (under Fatah) as either one or two true national states. They are not because of their tight control under Israel, as you must know. If you don't, you can look up those uncomfortable facts. (Gaza, for instance, is often regarded as the "biggest outdoor prison" and that is not because of Hamas but because of Israel's control.)
Again, your position comes down to "they all do it" (human rights violations) as an excuse for what Israel does to the Palestinians within its own borders, in the West Bank, and, indirectly in Gaza. You are of course right that there are no countries in the world that are without fault concerning minority rights but instead of expressing concern and regret that is the case, you want to use that fact to justify what is happening in Israel. What you miss, of course, is that it is matters of degree in suppression of human rights that matter. At the top of the scale in barbarity are China, North Korea, Russia, Myanmar, lower down are the US, UK, India, and Israel, the Arab States, and near the other end, countries like Iceland, Luxembourg and a few others. Of course one can argue about the relative rankings but I would be happy to agree with you that the scale of violations in Israel is less than in China or Russia, for instance. But that should not induce complacency or indifference about what happens in Israel, should it? But then again, you do not really care about human rights do you? I judge that from your comment about "All Lives Matter bullshit".
I have written this in haste and I am sure that, with time, I could have fashioned it into something better but this will have to do. You were so kind as to close your comment with some advice to me so let me reciprocate the favour: I urge you to convert your anger and bile into doing something constructive to help fight the wave of growing antisemitism in the US. You are not aware of such? Well, it is not hard to find the information about this trend. You could start, though not finish, by Googling "Tree of Life Synagogue". After you have done this research, I would urge you to re-evaluate your conclusion that minority rights in the "West" are "secure". (Of course, if you were willing to look also at the situation of Afro-Americans and Asian Americans in the US too, you might reach an even darker conclusion than if you just concentrate on anti-Semitism.)
I cannot say that I have enjoyed this exchange but it has been interesting. Please do not reply. I will say good-bye to you and wish you good luck in your personal life (if not in the furtherance of your views on the Israel-Palestine situation.) Yours sincerely, Adam Wilkins (my very non-Jewish surname by the way is from my stepfather but in ancestry I am 100% Ashkenazi Jewish and that is an important part of my self-perceived identity.)
I can tell this comment was written in haste, despite its length, because you didn't address anything I actually said. We were discussing states that privilege one group over another. I pointed out that there are 23 Arab states that privilege Arabs over others. You said nothing about that.
You seem to be confused. You and Peter are supposed to be the ones who think minority rights in the West are secure, so nation-states like Israel aren't needed. I think you proved my point for me by bringing up the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, and I thank you for it.
Do you have anything to say about the existence of the dozens of nation-states which all privilege one group of people over another? Anything at all?
The Jews of Western Europe also did not want those Eastern European shtetl Jews increasingly fleeing progroms, to come to the West. They discouraged them to the point of paying them to go back. Many perished this way, up to and including the Holocaust. Another way was to finance their settling in Palestine, through buying land from absentee
landlords and underwriting the establishment of the “yshuv”, the settlement, see the extensive Rothschild involvement. The first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, who made an enormous effort to create the state, without him it would not exist, had a total disdain for its people and whenever he could, stayed in London. There was no thought given to whether the land could accommodate the people, 500 villages were destroyed and 700000 people were displaced in the Nakba, replaced by 700,000 Jews, to create a majority. In the long run, between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, Jews are no longer a majority, with all the implications.
I agreed with your comments completely and am pretty appalled by "Winters" comments below in their blindness, double-standards and hypocrisy.
The one thing that I think you left out in your commentary was the evangelical Christian right's support of Israel because they hope that Israel will bring on Armageddon and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (or something like that). It is all too loopy for words but totally against what honest and idealistic Zionists hope for and want, a viable and at least partially democratic state where Jewish people can live and thrive. For Zionists, this nutty Christian fringe is the strange bedfellows syndrome writ large.
If you disagree with me, Adam, I'm right here. Make an argument against my 'double standards and hypocrisy', if you can.
😬
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/19/harvard-kenneth-roth-fellowship-israel-criticism?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
https://www.thejc.com/news/news/nus-inquiry-brands-student-union-hostile-environment-for-jews-10g0G1VtbfW7tFpFPxxfGm
A bunch of things wrong with this line of thinking, Peter.
First of all, Zionism is necessary to secure the rights of Jews in the Middle East. Israel is surrounded by fascistic Muslim Arab countries that oppress and abuse all of their national minorities, including Jews when they had them. In the West, minority rights are secure and a state is not needed in order to protect minorities. The two situations are not the same. American Zionists are not contradicting themselves when they say the US should remain egalitarian and Israel should remain Jewish any more than American Palestinian nationalists are when they say the same thing about the US while remaining silent about Palestine's Arab Muslim character.
Your argument that because some anti-Semites use Israel as a model for what they want and therefore that makes Israel bad is specious. There have been Black student unions on college campuses for decades without an issue. Some bad faith alt right students in 2015 started going around calling for "White Student Unions" on multiple college campuses. They, like the anti-Semites you mentioned, used Black student unions as a model. But they were decried as racist but Black student unions still continue today because white people are a dominant majority and Black people, like Jews, are a marginalized minority. See the difference?
As always, your comments are totally hypocritical when applied to your beloved Palestine. Palestine gets a ton of support from anti-Semites and is also seeking to create a country owned by one dominant ethnic, racial and religious group. Can we see criticism from you about Palestinian nationalism specifically (none of your typical 'All Lives Matter' bullshit) and anti-Semitism going hand and hand? I won't hold my breath.
“Israel is surrounded by fascistic Muslim Arab countries that oppress and abuse all of their national minorities, including Jews when they had them.”
You say this as if Israel is the only goody two shoes in the Middle East. Doesn’t Israel oppress and abuse its Palestinian minority? And if these Arab countries are so bad, why does Israel want friendly relations with them?
No, and because peace is better than war, even if it's peace with bad people.
"Your argument that because some anti-Semites use Israel as a model for what they want and therefore that makes Israel bad is specious."
Winters, I don't believe you have correctly characterized Peter's argument. Nowhere here or in his Jewish Currents piece do I see him suggest that Israel is bad (or "bad"). He's exploring a correlation between pro-Zionism and anti-Semitism that is widespread historically and geographically, and discussing how such antisemitic pro-Zionism's roots lie in a broader commitment to ethnic-supermacist nationalism. If there is a problem with Israel, based on this view, it is with its tilt towards ethnic-supremacism, not with its nationalism (to the degree that "nationalism" celebrates the political nation-state rather than an ethnic identity).
I do agree with you that the case of Israel is unique, in that the Israeli nation-state is premised on the goal of creating an ethnic refuge (and I hold a Zionist view of Israel's legitimacy for this reason). I don't think Peter addresses that aspect in this argument.
I agree too that "Palestine gets a ton of support from anti-Semites," but I also agree with Peter that by far the lion's share of that tonnage goes towards Israel. Right wing antisemitism is virutally never pro-Palestinian: antisemitic Evangelicals, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists have absolutely no interest in supporting Palestinians. Left wing support for Palestinians, as Peter's essay argues, tends to be more anti-Zionist than antisemitic (or, I think more often in the US, anti-Likudnik). The financial element of "support" comes almost entirely from the Right and to Israel (although sometimes governments providing high levels of support are Left-leaning).
I'd add that I don't think it's accurate to say that Palestinian nationalists are "seeking to create a country owned by one dominant ethnic, racial and religious group," although that might well be the result if they attained their goals. Most Palestinian nationalists are focused on attaining political self-determination for their territory of residence, not on excluding non-Palestinians from that territory. (This invites unproductively complicated argument because of the history and nature of Israeli settlements, and my last statement may seem untrue if those become the focus, but I think if you look more broadly the general point holds, although to the degree that Palestinian goals move on to focus on the right of return it will not--which is why my own ideal is a two-state, non-exclusionary outcome, with the right of return mooted.)
Robert, Peter has a long history of being anti-Zionist and anti-Israel's existence as a Jewish state. You can read all of his many writings on the topic for evidence, but in this one post he says "Israel is built around the idea of privileging one particular ethno-religious group: Jews." As a good progressive, Peter is clearly opposed to such an idea.
You're factually incorrect that right wing anti-Semitism is virtually never pro-Palestinian. For one thing, Muslim anti-Semitism is right wing and groups like Hamas, the Iranian government and Islamic Jihad are right wing and anti-Semitic, obviously. For another, in the West, right wing anti-Semites are in fact pro-Palestinian or at least anti-Israel (as the two terms are interchangeable). For example, David Duke has repeatedly tweeted 'Free Palestine' and endorsements of BDS.
As for Palestinian nationalists, read Palestine's constitution. It makes it clear Palestine is an Arab Muslim state for Arab Muslims.
Thanks for the reply, Winters. I think that, indeed, "Israel is built around the idea of privileging one particular ethno-religious group: Jews," as Peter says. But the meaning of "privilege" has both an external and internal meaning. The external meaning is that only Jews have the right to make aliyah, and that is intrinsic to Zionism. The internal meaning is that Jews have the privilege of exclusive rights within Israel, rights that others do not have or have only in truncated form. I cannot imagine that Peter's statement referred to this second aspect as foundational to Zionism, since it is directly counter to the Zionism of Hertzl, which was dominant at Israel's founding.
I wondered as I typed before whether you'd raise the issue of Muslim antisemitism in governments we'd consider rightwing. I thought it would be better not to get into those weeds, but since we're there I think the best response I can give is to grant your point, while also noting that there is no commonality between the "Right" in those countries and the Right outside the Arab world.
As for David Duke, you took me by surprise and I have to grant your point. However, I have spent a great deal of time reading white nationalist tracts and on dedicated white nationalist platforms, and I do not recall encountering other instances. There may be ones I have not encountered, like these statements of Duke's--I don't follow Twitter--but my guess is that you've found an outlier. (If I were more conscientious and had more time I'd fire up my VPN and revisit a range of dedicated sites and toxic chan discussion boards to see whether I can find more evidence that supports you, but I don't have the stomach for it right now.)
The Palestinian Constitution says, "Palestinians shall be equal before the law and the judiciary, without distinction based upon race, sex, color, religion, political views or disability" (I'm quoting Article 9). How meaningful that is can be discussed, but I believe the text does not support your inference that the Constution makes clear the goal is for a state exclusively for Arab Muslims.
How convenient to the narrative that one of the most prominent right wing anti-Semites out there is 'an outlier'.
Palestinian Constitution: "Palestine is part of the larger Arab world, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab nation. Arab unity is an objective that the Palestinian people shall work to achieve..... Islam is the official religion in Palestine....The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation."
Well, that convenience factor could work either way, Winter. But I have to acknowledge my overstatement and the validity of your response. However, you much overstate David Duke's position in white nationalism. He is an emblem of past leadership, but leadership has passed on to other senior figures, like Jared Taylor, Kevin MacDonald and Greg Johnson, and junior ones like Andrew Anglin, Thomas Rousseau, Richard Spencer, and Nick Fuentes.
I cannot prove a negative through research online, but I'm not finding similar statements from most other prominent white nationalists. I did, however, find a 2014 quote that I think expresses a clear rationale for white nationalist support of the Palestinian cause from Greg Johnson, on his "Counter Currents" magazine site (I don't recommend going there).
-- "But ultimately, white interests and Palestinian interests do not coincide. Palestinians, quite naturally, want their country back. They want to send the Jews back whence they came. As a White Nationalist, I want all our Jews to go to Israel, and that means that I want Israel to stay put. What about Palestinian self-determination? I support a Palestinian homeland, right next to the Jewish homeland, because I want to send the Palestinian diaspora home as well."
I expect that's the sort of idea Duke had in mind. If you want to call that pro-Palestinian, fair enough. But it is not a call to recognize that the Palestinian rights have been unjustly suppressed; it supports Palestinians because they have been suppressed specifically by Jews. (Notice that Johnson manages also to voice support for Israel's continued existence as well, precisely in the terms Peter describes. Johnson supports the existence of Israel to quaratine Jews, just as he supports the existence of Palestine to quarantine Palestinians.)
I know the phrases you based your Constitution comment on. Having an official religion and expressing solidarity with the Arab world is not the same as excluding those of other religions and excluding non-Arabs, as the clause I cited demonstrates. When you referred to the Palestinian goal as "owning" the state of Palestine and said that the Constitution made clear that it would be "an Arab Muslim state for Arab Muslims," I took you to mean it pejoritively, as excluding others or denying their rights. That seems to me inconsistent with what the Constitution actually says. If you meant to say that the Constitution said that Palestine would be a homeland for Palestinian Arabs governed under laws aligned with Muslim tradition, while accommodating people of other races, religions, and political views, that would be fine. I think it would, however, weaken the overall points you were hoping to make because it's a somewhat Hertzlian goal. (To be clear, many states with fine constitutions egregiously violate them routinely, so I don't put much stock in anything the current draft says.)
I disagree with " in the West, minority rights are secure and a state is not needed in order to protect minorities. The two situations are not the same". I believe the Jim Crow Laws propagated all through the Southern U.S.from the moment that emancipation for slaves was declared, would contradict your statement.
It's 2023, not the 1960s. Jim Crow laws don't exist anymore.
But if your point is that even in the United States, minorities aren't completely protected and are still at risk, then you're agreeing with me, not Peter. He's the one saying every country in the world needs to be like the US, egalitarian in name but still containing entrenched systematic racism.
Thank you for these comments. This is a true and unique understanding. Revealing. Where I feel caught is that, as a Jew and a "Child of Holocaust Survivors" and born as a displaced person in Munich -- I do feel deep inside of me that we Jews need a Jewish State. I don't want us to ever again be in the situation we were before, during and after WWII when we we had nowhere to go and we were slaughtered. At the same time, I feel for the Israeli Arabs/Palestinians. I do not want to be a second class citizen in the U.S. How to reconcile these intense knowings and feelings? Peter, your thoughts?
Diana--I understand your fears. I feel them myself. But I've come to the view that our safety is best secured through liberal democracy and a system based on equality under the law. I believe that legal inequality involves violence against Palestinians that ultimately also endangers us. I make that argument here. Best, Peter https://jewishcurrents.org/yavne-a-jewish-case-for-equality-in-israel-palestine
So Jewish safety is best secured in the United States, a country that kept out Jews during WWII and recently elected Trump, who is an anti-Semite? Interesting viewpoint, Peter.
Diana, don't let Peter and the rest of the mouth breathers gaslight you. Jews have every right to self-determine in a state of their own in their indigenous homeland. Your feelings for the Palestinians are admirable, but they are not reciprocated. Jews will never again be helpless minorities living under the yoke of an uncaring majority. Anyone who doesn't like it can suck an egg.
Your definition of indigenous is clearly inaccurate, and I breathe through my nose.
Inaccurate how?
"Indigenous" describes a group of people native to a specific region. In other words, it refers to people who lived there BEFORE colonists or settlers arrived, defined new borders, and began to occupy the land. Considering that the majority of what are now Israeli Jews MOVED to Palestine, either before 1948 to settle kibbutzim or post Nakba...they cannot be considered Indigenous, or native, they can only be considered colonial settlers furthering the ends of European White Supremacy and the Anti-Semitism that comes hand in hand with it.
"Today, Jews whose family immigrated from European countries and the Americas, on their paternal line, constitute the largest single group among Israeli Jews and consist of about 3,000,000[59] people living in Israel. About 1,200,000 of them are descended from or are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who returned from the diaspora after the fall of the Former Soviet Union 1991 (about 300,000 of them are not considered to be Jewish under Jewish law). Most of the other 1,800,000 are descended from the first Zionist settlers in the Land of Israel, as well as Holocaust survivors and their descendants, with an additional 200,000 having immigrated or descended from immigrants from English-speaking countries and South America."
They simply cannot be referred to as Indigenous, it is an inaccurate appropriation of the word, regardless of what Judaism teaches you about being Chosen and entitled to a land that your ancestors maybe might have lived in thousands of years ago. As Edwin states; not you, Lord Balfour, or any other mortal, living or dead, seems to have the messianic qualities called for to bring the Jews back to Palestine, and all innocent blood shed along the way is against God.
The Jewish people lived in Israel before colonists and settlers arrived. So they're indigenous. That's a fact of history.
Correction: Jewish people lived in Palestine before colonizers (the British) & settler colonizers (present day Israelis) arrived. THOSE Jewish people, along with the Christians & Muslims, who were ALL Palestinians, are Indigenous. THE Jewish people as a whole do not fit within the definition of Indigenous. Settler colonists who have come from all over Europe cannot possibly be Indigenous to Palestine.
Take for example, the likelihood of skin cancer amongst the Jewish population of the area, versus the lack of it amongst the Indigenous population whose bodies have adapted to the conditions of the regions over many generations.
"Despite this good news, an average of 163 new melanoma patients are diagnosed in Israel – 98 percent of them among Jews – and 15 die from the disease every month. Even though many Arabs work outdoors, their risk of melanoma is much lower because they do not sunbathe as much and tend to cover themselves up in the sun. They also generally have darker skin that protects them and rarely go to tanning parlors, where UV exposure is dangerous." -Taken from a 2021 Israeli newspaper article
Odd that an Indigenous population would be so at odds with their natural environment, as that would seemingly be against everything science has learned about evolution and the delicate balance of ecosystems that it produces... Perhaps you are suggesting God made a mistake matching up the Chosen people with their alleged homeland's ecology? Dangerous territory for someone whose worldview is apparently embedded in adherence to religious zealotry.
It is quite interesting to hear you say that you do not want to be a second class citizen in the US, do you feel that you are, and if so, that it is because you are Jewish? (I assume you live in the US) To me, this implies that you are not satisfied with your social standing, and would like to be a 1st class citizen in a Jewish state (which you deeply feel is necessary). But how can a Jewish supremacist state be achieved without the subjugation of any non-Jews? 1st class implies that there are lower classes, and in order for one group of people to be at the "top", there must be others trodden upon, in this case the Palestinians, the indigenous inhabitants of the current "state of israel". This seems to be edging dangerously into ethnofascism, exactly one of the conditions that led to the situations before WWII that you seem concerned with your people experiencing again. I see you "feel for" the Palestinians, but I wonder if it bothers you that Palestinians have been slaughtered for close to 8 decades, precisely so that Jews can be first class citizens of a land that was already inhabited, or do you only truly care when the people that are suffering are of your own? I do indeed wonder what Peter will say.
Mr Winters, If you took what I wrote as a "diatribe" and reduce my comments to "whining and screaming", you either did not read what I said with any understanding or you simply dismiss my comments because you cannot answer them. If the former, I would urge you to take a remedial reading course so that you learn to read with better comprehension. In terms of helpful further advice, I would also urge you to try to become a more civilised person. You need to learn how to disagree about issues without going for the ad hominem attack, which is what you have now done several times with me. Please do not take that comment as an ad hominem attack itself: it is a straight up personal criticism of someone who is not a very nice person -- and who could do a lot better. Good-bye Mr Winters.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Adam. I'll be here whenever you're able to come up with a nation-state that doesn't privilege one group of people over another.
Peter, I hope that in your conversation with Yair Rosenburg you will ask him to confront the evident reality that Israel’s expulsion and oppression of the Palestinian people in order privilege Jews and the constant defamation by the Zionist Jewish establishment of those who criticize Israel as being “antisemitic” are two of the main causes of growth of anti-Jewish sentiment (i.e. antisemitism) in the world, or at least in the United States, today. One only needs to think of Jewish Voice for Peace to know that this new kind of distaste for Jews as a group is not justified, but the mainstream Jewish organizations that remain Zionist and either defend Israel right or wrong, or wring their hands and oppose actions that could force Israel to change its behavior, share the blame for this new and appalling strain of antisemitism.
Thanks to Peter for focusing on historical truths that we need to understand in order to combat the growth of antisemitism. Thanks also to Adam Wilkins and Robert Eno for correcting Mr. Winters’ mischaracterization of the points that Peter was making and Mr. Winters’ mischaracterization of Palestinian demands for humane treatment and equal rights as a call to create state that would that would subject Jews to a regime such that which Israel imposes on them.
More fundamentally Mr. Winters seeks to justify Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, in taking their land, freedom and identity as a people from them in a settler colonialist enterprise by falsely equating the creation of the State of Israel and srael’s treatment of the Palestinians with the treatment of Jews in other Middle Eastern states, where Jews, Muslims and Christians often lived in harmony until the creation of the Jewish state in Palestine led Arab governments to expel their Jewish residents to Israel. One could add this to Peter’s list of antisemitic motivations for sending Jews to Israel, this one largely provoked by the creation of State of Israel itself.
It is a corruption of the language and an insult to intelligence to equate the creation of the state of Israel and the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their country and their subsequent oppression with the practice of other states in “privileging one group of people over another.” A close case is the Chinese treatment of the Uyghers, which the world has rightly condemned, though even Mr. Adams rather mysteriously judges Israel to be lower down than China on the scale of barbarity.
Peter, I wanted to share a Forward story with you and the group. https://forward.com/opinion/531286/cnn-producer-fired-antisemitic-tweets-teshuvah-kenya/
WOW. Many of your weekly Topics have led me to think, question myself and want to share with others..Jews and Non Jews alike. However this one really blew me away. Reading Lord Montagu's memo was simply an earth shattering experience. His warnings about what will happen to the Christians and Mohammedans (?) Seems to have been brushed aside. It is quite obvious that this man saw himself as a Brit through and through yet recognized the very true existence of Anti Semitism. His suggestion that the British Armed forces should establish a Foreign Legion as opposed to a "Jewish Legion" made total sense.
Mr Winters, You are clearly unreachable and so trying to have an exchange of ideas with you is pointless. But there may be other readers of "The Binary Notebook" who have followed our exchange and so this reply addresses your short comment but is really for their eyes.
In your comment of only 34 words, you make three mistakes. First, there is the error in your reading: I never said that there were any countries with a spotless human rights record. In fact, most of my two earlier messages dealt with just that fact; there is a wide spectrum of abuses across the globe and no country is perfect and many are in the range of bad-to-atrocious . But you can barely acknowledge that I said so, which reflects your second error, one of logic. You seem to imply that if all countries "privilege" one group at the expense of others, that somehow makes them all equivalent. Wrong! The extent of de-privileging, which correlates with the extent of human rights violations, does make a difference to the amount of evil performed and suffering inflicted. To be black or Jewish or Muslim in Iceland, New Zealand, Germany -- not the exclusive list, of course, of relatively non-problematical countries -- is in general far less fraught than to have any of those identities in the US, the UK and (yes) Israel (let alone China, North Korea, China for one or more of those ethnicities). Though you will not utter the phrase "human rights" (except to label it as "bullshit") you sort of in a backhanded way, admit, for example, that China and Russia are pretty bad that way and that that does make a difference. Your third mistake is moral: you want to excuse what Israel does to Palestinians within the country itself and on the West Bank and in Gaza because "all countries" do it ("privileging" one group against others.) Wrong again! That is the morality of the gutter not where civilised people should live or the standards they should uphold if they genuinely want to make the world a better place, where no one is punished for his religion, skin colour, ethnic group.
One last point: in his latest podcast, Peter uses the word "distraction" to characterise the discussion over the Kenneth Roth affair at Harvard when the real issue is human rights violations that HRW has called out, in Israel and many other countries. Your correspondence with me amounts to a similar distraction from that issue, cloaking your unwillingness to acknowledge that Israel is indeed an apartheid state, as classified by at least three major human rights organisations (even if is different in the details of its apartheid from the government and society of the old South Africa.)
Indeed, you are exactly describing the tactics of Zionism and the colonial steed it rides in on, thank you. And yes, I do have a say in how Zionisms incredible distortion and appropriation of Judaism affects the Palestinian population that is currently materially imperiled (already 17 murdered, 3 of which were children, in 2023) rather than conceptually, (anti semitism has not murdered any Israelis or Jews thus far this year as far I am aware), as I, a Palestinian, am in mortal danger perpetually simply for the sake of Jewish supremacy. I don't care who you are or what beliefs you have that govern your own life, but once those beliefs bleed into fascism of any kind they become a problem. So yes, this actually is my business because unlike Hasbara trolls & Zionist keyboard warriors whose worldview comes from distorted media, brainwashing (just ask Gideon Levy, or wait... let me guess... he is a self hating Jew too?), and a lifetime of being told they are better and more important than everyone else...this is a matter of life or death for me and my family. I would honestly love more than anything for this NOT to be my business but sadly, it is.