Politics

An important marker has been passed

Published 23 August 2007

Those calling for a boycott of Israel were once distant voices. Now the discussion has gone global. It is growing inexorably and will not be silenced.

From a limestone hill rising above Qalandia refugee camp you can see Jerusalem. I watched a lone figure standing there in the rain, his son holding the tail of his long tattered coat. He extended his hand and did not let go. "I am Ahmed Hamzeh, street entertainer," he said in measured English. "Over there, I played many musical instruments; I sang in Arabic, English and Hebrew, and because I was rather poor, my very small son would chew gum while the monkey did its tricks. When we lost our country, we lost respect. One day a rich Kuwaiti stopped his car in front of us. He shouted at my son, "Show me how a Palestinian picks up his food rations!" So I made the monkey appear to scavenge on the ground, in the gutter. And my son scavenged with him. The Kuwaiti threw coins and my son crawled on his knees to pick them up. This was not right; I was an artist, not a beggar . . . I am not even a peasant now."

"How do you feel about all that?" I asked him.
"Do you expect me to feel hatred? What is that to a Palestinian? I never hated the Jews and their Israel . . . yes, I suppose I hate them now, or maybe I pity them for their stupidity. They can't win. Because we Palestinians are the Jews now and, like the Jews, we will never allow them or the Arabs or you to forget. The youth will guarantee us that, and the youth after them . . .".

That was 40 years ago. On my last trip back to the West Bank, I recognised little of Qalandia, now announced by a vast Israeli checkpoint, a zigzag of sandbags, oil drums and breeze blocks, with conga lines of people, waiting, swatting flies with precious papers. Inside the camp, the tents had been replaced by sturdy hovels, although the queues at single taps were as long, I was assured, and the dust still ran to caramel in the rain. At the United Nations office I asked about Ahmed Hamzeh, the street entertainer. Records were consulted, heads shaken. Someone thought he had been "taken away . . . very ill". No one knew about his son, whose trachoma was surely blindness now. Outside, another generation kicked a punctured football in the dust.

And yet, what Nelson Mandela has called "the greatest moral issue of the age" refuses to be buried in the dust. For every BBC voice that strains to equate occupier with occupied, thief with victim, for every swarm of emails from the fanatics of Zion to those who invert the lies and describe the Israeli state's commitment to the destruction of Palestine, the truth is more powerful now than ever. Documentation of the violent expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 is voluminous. Re-examination of the historical record has put paid to the fable of heroic David in the Six Day War, when Ahmed Hamzeh and his family were driven from their home. The alleged threat of Arab leaders to "throw the Jews into the sea", used to justify the 1967 Israeli onslaught and since repeated relentlessly, is highly questionable. In 2005, the spectacle of wailing Old Testament zealots leaving Gaza was a fraud. The building of their "settlements" has accelerated on the West Bank, along with the illegal Berlin-style wall dividing farmers from their crops, children from their schools, families from each other. We now know that Israel's destruction of much of Lebanon last year was pre-planned. As the former CIA analyst Kathleen Christison has written, the recent "civil war" in Gaza was actually a coup against the elected Hamas-led government, engineered by Elliott Abrams, the Zionist who runs US policy on Israel and a convicted felon from the Iran-Contra era.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is as much America's crusade as Israel's. On 16 August, the Bush administration announced an unprecedented $30bn military "aid package" for Israel, the world's fourth biggest military power, an air power greater than Britain, a nuclear power greater than France. No other country on earth enjoys such immunity, allowing it to act without sanction, as Israel. No other country has such a record of lawlessness: not one of the world's tyrannies comes close. International treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified by Iran, are ignored by Israel. There is nothing like it in UN history.

But something is changing. Perhaps last summer's panoramic horror beamed from Lebanon on to the world's TV screens provided the catalyst. Or perhaps cynicism of Bush and Blair and the incessant use of the inanity, "terror", together with the day-by-day dissemination of a fabricated insecurity in all our lives, has finally brought the attention of the international community outside the rogue states, Britain and the US, back to one of its principal sources, Israel.

I got a sense of this recently in the United States. A full-page advertisement in the New York Times had the distinct odour of panic. There have been many "friends of Israel" advertisements in the Times, demanding the usual favours, rationalising the usual outrages. This one was different. "Boycott a cure for cancer?" was its main headline, followed by "Stop drip irrigation in Africa? Prevent scientific co-operation between nations?" Who would want to do such things? "Some British academics want to boycott Israelis," was the self-serving answer. It referred to the University and College Union's (UCU) inaugural conference motion in May, calling for discussion within its branches for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. As John Chalcraft of the London School of Economics pointed out, "the Israeli academy has long provided intellectual, linguistic, logistical, technical, scientific and human support for an occupation in direct violation of international law [against which] no Israeli academic institution has ever taken a public stand".

The swell of a boycott is growing inexorably, as if an important marker has been passed, reminiscent of the boycotts that led to sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Both Mandela and Desmond Tutu have drawn this parallel; so has South African cabinet minister Ronnie Kasrils and other illustrious Jewish members of the liberation struggle. In Britain, an often Jewish-led academic campaign against Israel's "methodical destruction of [the Palestinian] education system" can be translated by those of us who have reported from the occupied territories into the arbitrary closure of Palestinian universities, the harassment and humiliation of students at checkpoints and the shooting and killing of Palestinian children on their way to school.

British initiatives

These initiatives have been backed by a British group, Independent Jewish Voices, whose 528 signatories include Stephen Fry, Harold Pinter, Mike Leigh and Eric Hobsbawm. The country's biggest union, Unison, has called for an "economic, cultural, academic and sporting boycott" and the right of return for Palestinian families expelled in 1948. Remarkably, the Commons' international development committee has made a similar stand. In April, the membership of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) voted for a boycott only to see it hastily overturned by the national executive council. In the Republic of Ireland, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has called for divestment from Israeli companies: a campaign aimed at the European Union, which accounts for two-thirds of Israel's exports under an EU-Israel Association Agreement. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, has said that human rights conditions in the agreement should be invoked and Israel's trading preferences suspended.

This is unusual, for these were once distant voices. And that such grave discussion of a boycott has "gone global" was unforeseen in official Israel, long comforted by its seemingly untouchable myths and great power sponsorship, and confident that the mere threat of anti-Semitism would ensure silence. When the British lecturers' decision was announced, the US Congress passed an absurd resolution describing the UCU as "anti-Semitic". (Eighty congressmen have gone on junkets to Israel this summer.)

This intimidation has worked in the past. The smearing of American academics has denied them promotion, even tenure. The late Edward Said kept an emergency button in his New York apartment connected to the local police station; his offices at Columbia University were once burned down. Following my 2002 film, Palestine is Still the Issue, I received death threats and slanderous abuse, most of it coming from the US where the film was never shown. When the BBC's Independent Panel recently examined the corporation's coverage of the Middle East, it was inundated with emails, "many from abroad, mostly from North America", said its report. Some individuals "sent multiple missives, some were duplicates and there was clear evidence of pressure group mobilisation". The panel's conclusion was that BBC reporting of the Palestinian struggle was not "full and fair" and "in important respects, presents an incomplete and in that sense misleading picture". This was neutralised in BBC press releases.

The courageous Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé, believes a single democratic state, to which the Palestinian refugees are given the right of return, is the only feasible and just solution, and that a sanctions and boycott campaign is critical in achieving this. Would the Israeli population be moved by a worldwide boycott? Although they would rarely admit it, South Africa's whites were moved enough to support an historic change. A boycott of Israeli institutions, goods and services, says Pappé, "will not change the [Israeli] position in a day, but it will send a clear message that [the premises of Zionism] are racist and unacceptable in the 21st century . . . They would have to choose."

And so would the rest of us.

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178 comments from readers

report this comment Cybertiger
23 August 2007

John Pilger said,

"The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is as much America's crusade as Israel's."

With the help of the American Judeo-Christian coalition of the willing, the Zionists have messed up big time.

I think it's time for the Jews to look for a new homeland.

George Bush has laid waste the moral wastelands of Texas and the children of Israel badly need to be re-homed. The neo-Jewish homeland could be a true redemption, a legacy that the amoral Christians, Bush - and Blair - could justifiably be proud of. Dubbya could bring the Israelites home safe on the ranch. The words 'Israel in Texas' have that ring of justice, a spanking new morality and a truly realistic homecoming. Yo, bring it on ...

report this comment mitchy
23 August 2007

Antarctica is thawing out, plenty of room there, and no indigenous population to oppress - sorted!

report this comment ikotubo
23 August 2007

For quite a while, I'd begun to think I was the only one realize that the "anti-semitism" slur had lost its value. It was so misused that it no longer meant anything - other than a despicable attempt to supress even the mildest criticism of Israeli atrocities. Even Jimmy Carter (yes, that US President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt) was labelled "anti-semitic." His crime? He dared to highlight the plight of the Palestinian people in a book he wrote recently. Not to mention those critics who happen to be of Jewish origin, who are labelled "self-hating Jews." The only surprise is that they never saw it coming.

report this comment Jon Pike
23 August 2007

What a dreadful, innaccurate article, especially about the 'boycott movement' in Britain.

1) Academics in the AUT threw out moves for an academic boycott, once they got the chance to vote on it in 2005. In the UCU, currently, the boycotters are fighting tooth and nail to prevent there being a ballot of the membership, even though, in branch polls, 90% support a ballot, and around 80% oppose a boycott.

2) Independent Jewish Voices do not as a collective, support a boycott of Israel. This is just nonsense, and runs against the whole ethos of that organisation.

3) In the NUJ, like the AUT, it was a members' revolt that forced the executive to drop the boycott proposal.

Pilger is just massively ill-informed about the British labour movement - and wants to believe the small minority of boycotters are 'silenced' or 'intimidated.' This is nonsense. They are a small minority because not very many people agree with them.

Pilger wants to wrap this story up as another instance of the powerful Zionist lobby. It's nothing of the sort - the explanantion is much more prosaic: it's to do with the collapse of norms of democracy in the british tade union movement, and the unrepresentative nature of its 'delegate democracy'. Otherwise, why not give us a vote? Then we'll see if the boycott grows inexorably

report this comment Jon Pike
23 August 2007

To run your own check on the stunning ineptitude of Pilger's research, do a google search on Brian Klug and find his article 'spare us the analogies' from the Guardian. Take a look at it. In it, Klug forcefully articulates the case against an academic boycott, and against the facile analogy with South African apartheid.

This is the same Brian Klug who is a founder member and drafter of the IJV declaration. Pilger cites this group as supporting the academic boycott. Klug, and Stephen Fry, and Hobbawm, should complain, or more. None of them back an academic boycott.

This is perhaps the worst, most conflating, most innacurate most disingenuous article on the boycotters in Britain ever published. Of course, as you can see above, it gives a chance for the Israel-eliminationists to froth at the mouth.

Yeah, Mitchy, cybertiger, that's a charge of anti-semitism. Your vile comments are no part of the left. Shame on the NS for hosting them.

report this comment Ganpatram
23 August 2007

The alleged threat of the Arab leaders in 1967 to throw the Jews into the sea is highly questionable, says Pilger.

This is an amazing attempt to re-write the historical record.

Just read the newspapers of the time, the BBC reports.

Is Pilger prepared to substantiate his astounding claim?

If not, he standa branded as a totally unreliable journalist.

The sad truth about journalism is that abiding by the complex truth is not often a paying game. People get excited about a journalist if he or she is obviously prejudiced. Then you become the hero of many readers and what is equally profitable, the enemy of many others. Either way you become a valuable journalistic commodity for editors. Hence the Pilgers. He plays fast and lose with history and is lionised by many readers for it. All he has to lose is his integrity.

report this comment ECG
23 August 2007

I am a personal fraction of the large public out there and personally do boycott anything coming from Israel as a sign of repulse to the country's policy foreign. I'm not academic but cannot accept Israel ways. This simple and clear though effective in the long run only

report this comment ikotubo
23 August 2007

It seems that those attacking Mr Pilger's credibility as a journalist are merely attempting to divert people's attention from the main thrust os his article: that the Palestinian people have been subjected to a cruel and brutal occupation for far too long.

report this comment Brian from Toronto
23 August 2007

I buy Israeli products every chance I get.

100s of millions of others do so by accident. If you want to boycott Israel, turn off your computer and junk your cell phone.

Boycotters, dream on

- Brian from Toronto

report this comment Brian from Toronto
23 August 2007

But how do we get the Palestinians to end the occupation?

Israel offered Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in a peace deal.

Arafat responded with the Intifdah.

Sharon ordered a unilateral withdrawal.

When Israel left Gaza, the Palestinians responded with daily rocket attacks.

Naturally, Israel gave up on the idea of unilaterally withdrawing from the West Bank, too.

The occupation began in self-defence and continues as self-defence.

It’s the Palestinians who refuse to end the occupation.

Boycott them, if you want to boycott someone.

report this comment julio
23 August 2007

Israel cant go on despising the Palestinians. If there is a future they have to find it together. The future lies with a community of the Middle East. Utopia, of course.

How long will Israel be able to go on alone.

report this comment pmendes
23 August 2007

From Dr Philip Mendes

Senior Lecturer

Monash University

PO Box 197

East Caulfield

Victoria

Australia 3145

24/8

It is hard not to admire John Pilger’s sympathy for the underdog including his advocacy for the stateless Palestinians (“The Swell of Boycott”).

However, his pro-Palestinian bias leads him to simplistically portray the Middle East conflict as involving powerful and evil Israelis oppressing defenceless and innocent Palestinian victims. In reality, this complex national conflict involves good and bad and extremists and moderates on both sides.

Pilger also proceeds to endorse calls for an academic boycott of Israel, and even implicitly urges the destruction of the State of Israel and its replacement by a single democratic state which is code for an Islamic Arab State of Palestine. These recommendations are based on the ethnic stereotyping of all Israelis, and suggest a hatred of the Israeli people.

They are also totally disconnected from reality. If Israel is really the world’s fourth biggest military power as alleged by Pilger, then why on earth would the Israelis voluntarily give up their sovereignty to live in a state dominated by their mortal foes? Go figure.

Philip Mendes

report this comment Brian from Toronto
23 August 2007

Julio,

You can’t go on despising the Palestinians. They’re human beings like you and I, which means they’re responsible for their own behaviour.

If they want their own country, they need to stop murdering Israelis and try to make peace instead.

It isn’t utopian; it’s common sense; and it’s the route preferred by many Palestinians, led by their president.

Unfortunately, president Abbas doesn’t control the many armed factions who’d rather fight Israel than have their own Palestinian state.

report this comment ikotubo
24 August 2007

To Dr Philip Mendes: Much more is expected from a senior academic than you've offered here, I'm afraid. To begin with, there's nothing "complex" about this at all. Israel only has to comply with the basic principles of international law (including certain specific UN Resolutions and a ruling by the International Court of Justice). Or don't you accept that the UN is the final moral and legal arbiter in these matters?

Secondly, your anti-semitic slur against a fine journalist like Mr Pilger, whom many people of Jewish origin have expressed an admiration for, is beneath contempt.

report this comment Brian from Toronto
24 August 2007

There's nothing complex at all.

Israel has only to commit national suicide

and John Pilget will be happy.

What could be simpler?

report this comment Brian from Toronto
24 August 2007

Ikotubo,

Thank you for supporting Israel. You do so every time Ifyou use your computer, with its Zionist created central processing chip.

XOXO

report this comment pmendes
24 August 2007

THE UN IS AN IMPERFECT BODY WHICH HAS OFTEN BEEN BIASED IN ONE DIRECTION. ITS KEY INITIAL DECISION IN 1948 TO ESTABLISH THE STATE OF ISRAEL WAS OF COURSE VIOLATED BY THE ARAB STATES WHO SOUGHT TO DROWN THE UN-CREATED STATE AT BIRTH. THE UN DID NOTHING TO PROTECT ISRAEL AGAINST THIS AGGRESSION.

Secondly, your anti-semitic slur against a fine journalist like Mr Pilger, whom many people of Jewish origin have expressed an admiration for, is beneath contempt.

I HAVE NOT MENTIONED ANTI-SEMITISM ANYWHERE. THAT IS YOUR OBSESSION. WHAT I DID SAY WAS THAT ANYONE WHO CALLS FOR BOYCOTTS OF A WHOLE PEOPLE ON ETHNIC GROUNDS IS ADVOCATING ETHNIC STEREOTYPING. THIS IS NOT NORMALLY SOMETHING ANYONE FROM THE LEFT WOULD WANT TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH.

PHILIP

report this comment ECG
24 August 2007

It is enough to look at the evolution of the territory of the Israeli state to see that there is nothing fair or innocent in the way it approaches its neighbours.

Israel is not the victim,is the agressor and pretending different is demagogy

report this comment ikotubo
24 August 2007

To PMENDES: You say the UN is "imperfect" and often "biased" - and by direct implication, deserves to be treated with so much contempt by the Israelis. In what specific way/s has it been biased against the Israelis? By proposing a two-State solution (as a result of which its envoy got assassinated by a group led by someone who was later elected as Israel's Prime Minister)? By recognizing Israel's right to exist in peace and security, even though it was founded through brazen terrorism (the same method that has now become an excuse for its ghastly and vicious occupation)? Because its judicial organ (of which renowned Jewish lawyers of blessed memory were immensely proud) has ruled that the wall it has erected has brought untold and unncecessary hardship upon a longsuffering people?

In any event, I'm sure even you don't believe the Australian government is "perfect" and/or "unbiased." But correct me if I'm wrong: you've remained a perfectly law-abiding citizen, perhaps in the knowledge that no human institution or system (let alone one that has to reconcile the interests of almost 200 nations) could ever be "perfect" or "unbiased."

As for your apparent "anti-semitism" slur against Mr Pilger, well, I hope I did truly misunderstand your point, because as I said earlier, that term has become utterly devalued through overuse - which, incidentally, is one of the points made by Mr Pilger himself.

report this comment mitchy
24 August 2007

To Jon Pike: frothing israel eliminationist? Sounds like you have an agenda of your own there, Jon.

As for being anti-semitic, I was being ironic, and I happen to be Jewish myself but it doesnt stop me from criticising and condemning the gross injustices I see, nor should it stop anyone else, regardless of people like you trying to stifle free expression by beating them with the 'anti-semitism' stick.

Who are you to tell me otherwise?

Get a grip.

report this comment Cybertiger
24 August 2007

@rice

"It is interesting that the first three comments to this article and its' "reasonable" solutions require deportation to inhabitable locations. Talk about slipery slope. I am not concerned that people would see injustice in Israel's history, but why does the remedy have to include the death of Jews. Pilger does not suggest this, but the choir he preaches to uses him like fuel for a gas oven."

This was a lovely comment; can I call you condi?

I don't understand: why does a Jewish rehoming in Texas equate with the death of the Jews? Surely, what is good for Amerikans can generally be construed as good for Israelis. Though it is hot like an oven, many Amerikans regard Texas as generally inhabitable and not a wilderness subject to forced deportation of lost souls from other states. However, in my comments above, I did imply that Texas might be considered morally uninhabitable, though hadn't thought that a likely problem for the Israeli regime and its current democratic devotees. Texas does deploy the death penalty, liberally, casually, callously and slowly ... but generally I don't think the Jews will have a problem in happily inhabiting the moral wastelands of Texas.

report this comment Cybertiger
24 August 2007

Dear Dr Mendes

"I HAVE NOT MENTIONED ANTI-SEMITISM ANYWHERE. THAT IS YOUR OBSESSION. WHAT I DID SAY WAS THAT ANYONE WHO CALLS FOR BOYCOTTS OF A WHOLE PEOPLE ON ETHNIC GROUNDS IS ADVOCATING ETHNIC STEREOTYPING. THIS IS NOT NORMALLY SOMETHING ANYONE FROM THE LEFT WOULD WANT TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH. PHILIP"

We've got the message: please don't shout and please don't beat us again with your silly leftist rhythm stick. And remember too, that "history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes." (Mark Twain)

report this comment ikotubo
24 August 2007

To Mitchy: Great post! That's how ludicrous the pro-Zionist position (if it could in fact be glorified with this word) has become.

report this comment Brian from Toronto
24 August 2007

Cybertiger is a Nazi and Mitchy and ikotubo are a card-carrying Trotskyites.

But get them started on Israel and you can't tell them apart.

report this comment Cybertiger
24 August 2007

"Cybertiger is a Nazi and Mitchy and ikotubo are a card-carrying Trotskyites."

And Brian, the brain from Toronto is a bitter lemon. I can hear his pips sqeaking.

report this comment Brian from Toronto
24 August 2007

Julio writes: “How long will Israel be able to go on alone?”

Julio, you need to get out more. Israel has diplomatic relations and growing trade with the whole world – with the exception of course a few fascist regimes such as Sudan and Iran. (And with enemies like these, Israel has to be a great place.)

The attempted academic blacklisting of Israeli Jews is being run by a clique of leftwing racists and is opposed by 80% of the union membership.

If the blacklist were instituted – against the wishes of the membership – it would run afoul of Britain’s anti-racism laws, and anyone attempting to enforce the blacklist would end up being disciplined by their university and sued by the victim of their racism.

In the meantime, the proposed blacklist has brought condemnation by 11,000 academics worldwide, including 32 Nobel Laureates and 55 university presidents.

Who is alone?

Look around. Who do we find denigrating Israel here on the greying pages of silver-spoon socialism? A couple Trotskyites and one Nazi.

That’s a fair reflection of the UCU leadership. But in the next union election, the scum will be skimmed from the pond.

report this comment alzwick13
24 August 2007

Pilger is almost heroic in his abilities not to let the facts get in the way of a good story. As other posters have mentioned, much of the "facts" that Pilger uses are either wrong, or unsubstantiated.

By the way Ikotubo, the reason people attack his credibility, as a journalist is that if all of what he bases his facts on are wrong, then his conclusion would be wrong.

Also, maybe one of the reasons that the UN is not taken seriously is that the new Human Rights Commission is spending almost all it's time on Israel, instead of Zimbabwe, Darfur, Burma, Iran, North Korea...etc.

One of the problems for many of the pro-Palestinian commentators here is that the Palestinians live in refugee camps not only because they fled Israel, but because their Arab brethren will not let them in and let them work. Thousands of Jews were forcibly expelled form Arab countries after Israel’s independence, but they are not starving in refugee camps. This is because the Israelis let them become citizens and absorbed them into society. Maybe the musician Pilger writes about would not have had it so bad if the neighboring Arab countries let him come and work. So, if any posters truly care about the Palestinians, shouldn’t they be criticizing the neighboring Arab countries as well?

report this comment Nadav Katz
24 August 2007

A Boycott Built on Bias / By Thomas Friedman

Two weeks ago I took part in commencement for this year’s doctoral candidates at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The ceremony was held in the amphitheater on Mount Scopus, which faces out onto the Dead Sea and the Mountains of Moab. The setting sun framed the graduate students in a reddish-orange glow against a spectacular biblical backdrop. Before I describe the ceremony, though, I have to note that it coincided with the news that Britain’s University and College Union had called on its members to consider a boycott of Israeli universities, accusing them of being complicit in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. Anyway, as the Hebrew U. doctoral candidates each had their names called out and rose to receive their diplomas from the university’s leadership, I followed along in the program. The Israeli names rolled by: “Moshe Nahmany, Irit Nowik, Yuval Ofir. But then every so often I heard an Arab name, like Nuha Hijazi or Rifat Azam or Taleb Mokari. Since the program listed everyone’s degrees and advisers, I looked them up. Rifat got his doctorate in law. His thesis was about “International Taxation of Electronic Commerce.” His adviser was “Prof. D. Gliksberg.” Nuha got her doctorate in biochemistry. Her adviser was “Prof. R. Gabizon.” Taleb had an asterisk by his name. So I looked at the bottom of the page. It said: “Summa Cum Laude.” His chemistry thesis was about “Semiconductor-Metal Interfaces,” and his adviser was “Prof. U. Banin.” These were Israeli Arab doctoral students — many of them women and one of whom accepted her degree wearing a tight veil over her head. Funny — she could receive her degree wearing a veil from the Hebrew University, but could not do so in France, where the veil is banned in public schools. Arab families cheered unabashedly when their sons and daughters received their Hebrew U. Ph.D. diplomas, just like the Jewish parents.

How crazy is this, I thought. Israel’s premier university is giving Ph.D.’s to Arab students, two of whom were from East Jerusalem — i.e. the occupied territories — supervised by Jewish Israeli professors, all while some far-left British academics are calling for a boycott of Israeli universities. I tell this story to underscore the obvious : that the reality here is so much more morally complex than the outside meddlers present it. Have no doubt, I have long opposed Israel’s post-1967 settlements. They have squandered billions and degraded the Israeli Army by making it an army of occupation to protect the settlers and their roads. And that web of settlements and roads has carved up the West Bank in an ugly and brutal manner — much uglier than Israel’s friends abroad ever admit. Indeed, their silence, particularly American Jewish leaders, enabled the settlement lunacy. But you’d have to be a blind, deaf and dumb visitor to Israel today not to see that the vast majority of Israelis recognize this historic mistake, and they not only approved Ariel Sharon’s unilateral uprooting of Israeli settlements in Gaza to help remedy it, but elected Ehud Olmert precisely to do the same in the West Bank. The fact that it is not happening now is hardly Israel’s fault alone. The Palestinians are in turmoil. So to single out Israeli universities alone for a punitive boycott is rank anti-Semitism. Let’s see, Syria is being investigated by the United Nations for murdering Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syrian agents are suspected of killing the finest freedom-loving Lebanese journalists, Gibran Tueni and Samir Kassir. But none of that moves the far left to call for a boycott of Syrian universities. Why? Sudan is engaged in genocide in Darfur. Why no boycott of Sudan? Why?

If the far-left academics driving this boycott actually cared about Palestinians they would call on every British university to accept 20 Palestinian students on full scholarships to help them with what they need most — building the skills to run a modern state and economy. And they would call on every British university to dispatch visiting professors to every Palestinian university to help upgrade their academic offerings. And they would challenge every Israeli university that already offers Ph.D.’s to Israeli Arabs to do even more. And they would challenge every Arab university the same way.

That’s what people who actually care about Palestinians would do. But just singling out Israeli universities for a boycott, in the face of all the other madness in the Middle East — that’s what anti-Semites would do.

.............

Unlike Friedman, my view is that what we have here is the evolvement of Neo-Socialism, mostly in Britain, that is the attempted harmonization of supposed Socialism and/or Islamism and anti-Jewish racism, the latter being the relentless and obsessive attack on the most important of an institution during the 20th and 21st centuries of a people, the Jewish people - its national home, the Jewish state of Israel. And since attacking the Jew is still not politically correct to do, the Jewish state of Israel has become a convenient substitute.

report this comment sarawood
24 August 2007

The mantra that Hamas must renounce violence,recognise Israel and past contracts before the US or the Quartet will deal with them must be b roken. It must be shown that Hamas has been elected democratically,that,despite Israel refusing to release the taxes due to Hamas and the Quartet cutting back its support, most recently resulting in 5 days of no electricity in Gaza at the height of summer,that Israel does not renounce violence against Gazans. TGhe Patience of Gaza is incredible. August 24th a 9 and an 11 year old boy were shot;no apologies. August 16th Khalil Sha'er a young boy at a bus stop near Tekoa is beaten to death by 5 soldiers;today 15 fisher boats off Gaza have b een sunk and young fishermen seized. The Palestinians have less than 22% of Mandate Palestine, and that chopped and carved up. Israeli abuse beggars belief. Surely the world after 60 years must wake up to the continual abuse of Palestinians and the relentless push of Israel to take Eretz Israel, from the sea to beyond the Jordan valley.

report this comment ikotubo
24 August 2007

To sarawood: Actually, it's the Palestinians that are committing all the atrocities you've described to the "helpless" Israelis, and much worse. Well, at least, that's what the pro-Zionist nutcases on this site would like the world to believe. Like your good self, I say, damn them all, and damn the odious ideology that informs their repugnant beliefs - and deeds!

report this comment Cybertiger
24 August 2007

Mr Katz said,

"Unlike Friedman, my view is that what we have here is the evolvement of Neo-Socialism, mostly in Britain, that is the attempted harmonization of supposed Socialism and/or Islamism and anti-Jewish racism, the latter being the relentless and obsessive attack on the most important of an institution during the 20th and 21st centuries of a people, the Jewish people - its national home ... "

And Cybertiger says,

This boycott thingy has certainly put a big cat amongst the semitic pigeons. However, the moral compass is broken. These homing pigeons have been lost in the wilderness wastes of the Middle East these last forty years and are now in dire need of a neo-national home. And I can hear the rhythm and blues of the Pied Piper from down on the ranch at Crawford ... calling these pigeons to roost.

report this comment Brian from Toronto
24 August 2007

Cybertiger writes: "Texas does deploy the death penalty, liberally, casually, callously and slowly ... but generally I don't think the Jews will have a problem in

happily inhabiting the moral wastelands of Texas."

Someone who chooses a name like "cybertiger" is obviously compensating for an inability to make it with women.

While muttering about "the Jews," he's doubtless rubbing his swastika and thinking how nice it is to have found kindrid haters on the lunatic left.

report this comment Nadav Katz
24 August 2007

And what are your answers, Mr. Cybertiger, to Tom Friedman's questions? Any substantive response to the reporrting of this fine international journalist?

I also invite Ms. Wood to share her view regarding this journalist and commentator's experiences. Would you, Ms. Wood? Could you?

report this comment Brian from Toronto
24 August 2007

Sarawood gets all dewy about the democratically elected Hamas … as they throw Fatah supporters off rooftops and execute others – in front of their wives in children – with a bullet to the back of the head.

Sara meet Cybertiger. Maybe you can help him with his problem. He can be the National- to your Socialist. Perhaps you can get the Fuehrer to officiate at your wedding.

report this comment Brian from Toronto
24 August 2007

IDF troops troops were trying to arrest a wanted Islamic Jihad operative and came under fire as they approached the family's home. Mahmoud Ibrahim Karnawi, age 11, was inside the home when his older half-brother opened fire on the approaching troops. The child was killed in the resulting gunfight.

Islamic Jihad have yet to issue an apology, and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting. But they might declare the kid a martyr.

report this comment Henrys2
24 August 2007

Jon Pike is correct to point out that Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) has not supported the call for a boycott. Pilger is wrong here and we will ask the New Statesman to publish a correction. We don't have a position on the boycott: some of our signatories support it, some oppose it.

Personally I oppose the boycott. The Israeli assalt on the Palestinians, the wall, the disregard for human rights all deserve condemnation but why is Israel singled as uniquely wrong in the world.

The fact is that every crime committed by Israel is repeated 10 or 100-fold by the US in its brutal occupation of Iraq. So why no call for a boycott of the USA?

As Pilger points out Israel, sadly, plays the role of a US client state. It is very useful for the US to have such a target to divert our anger onto. But let's not be diverted, let us be clear who the real enemy of peace, justice and human rights in the world is, who is actually mainating an unjust world order and feeding terrorism. It is not Israel but the US. Let's focus our anger there.

Henry Stewart

IJV Steering Committee Member, www.ijv.org.uk

(opinions personal, not those of IJV)

report this comment Brian from Toronto
24 August 2007

A Qassam rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing an eight-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister, and injuring five other children.

The rocket, fired at Israel, fell short and hit the children's house in the village of Beit Lahiya. No group claimed responsibility.

And no apologies.

Of course, this was an accident. The rocket was intended to murder Israeli children.

report this comment Brian from Toronto
24 August 2007

Two Palestinian children were killed along the Gaza-Israel border on Tuesday, Palestinian medical officials said.

The two dead were 10 and 12 years old, according to Dr. Muawiya Hassanin of the Palestinian Health Ministry.

A Palestinian rocket team had sent the children to retrieve a launcher it had earlier used to fire a rocket into Israel.

The army said troops targeted two figures when they approached the launcher.

"Anyone who is next to a launching cell is in danger," the IDF said….

Gaza militants fired three rockets into Israel on Tuesday, the army said, including one that hit an empty kindergarten in the town of Sderot.

No apologies from Hamas for setting up Palestinian children to be killed nor for targetting an Israeli kindergarten.

I'd say the people of Gaza are entirely too patient with these terrorists.

report this comment gnuneo
24 August 2007

yes, there are other instances of genocide and mankind's cruelty to their fellow man across the world, from america's occupation of iraq to the sudan.

so why does israel stand out for special condemnation?

a number of reasons, some good, some not so noble.

1. there is a very clear and deliberate attempt at ethnic cleansing, the dispossession and destruction of an entire people, based upon racist grounds.

2. there is the utter contempt shown to international law, that israel has ignored every UN resolution, and has thumbed its nose at the geneva accords.

3. that this historic injustice done to the palestinians is now the very clear crux of most of the main conflict points between the two great systems - the (post-christian) West, and Islam. That certain insane elements in the West who call themselves 'christian' are working to start WW3 through there, believing in medieval gobbledygook, and conspiring to make themselves Global Emperors.

4. that the zionists have used european guilt to deliberately obfuscate what is actually happening, deliberately manipulated european sensitivity to ram through their agenda that is so similar to the German Nazi concept of lebensraum, and 'racial purity'. (unsurprising, as these elements came through from the Bible).

5. that we judge them harsher than we do say the sudanese govt, because they are 'closer' to us, geographically, culturally and physically, and are therefore more real. (i said not all the reasons are noble ones, but this is also true).

6. because what is happening to the palestinians IS wrong, and a moral person and people WILL stand up and oppose it.

now i have said all that, i will add however that i am not so sure that collective punishment of all israeli academics is the right path to take, there are certainly many israeli academics who oppose the continuing occupation and systematic destruction of Palestine.

certainly, the blanket sanctions would have a greater impact than specific individual bans, but is it right to use collective punishment?

less so (obviously) than allowing the occupation to be continued, but ends do not justify means. Let us not fall into using the same philosophical positions that those who we wish to criticise do. Even in this milder form..

...far better to follow cybertiger's solution, and send them all to texas. Within 50yrs the great jewish nation will once agin build a powerful and wealthy state, and there they won't have to go bankrupt by being in a state of permanent war.

the palestinians are not going to go away, so israel either gets down to actually for once being serious about peace, accepting a palestinian state based on the green line (with obvious areas that would need discussion about, and perhaps purchasing off the palestinian govt), and having UN troops armed with anti-tank/anti-aircraft missiles to ensure they stay over their side of the divide for once, or they build huge great gas chambers and start to do openly what they have been doing by stealth, and accept the total sanctions that all moral states will impose upon them.

or they move to crawford, texas.

really, its their choice.

report this comment Brian from Toronto
24 August 2007

guano writes: "there is a very clear and deliberate

attempt at ethnic cleansing,"

We need read no more. The Palestinian population continues to skyrocket - both within Israel and without.

Guano goes on to recommend gassing the Palestinians or moving the Jews to Texas.

What island did this birdbrain escape from???

report this comment Cybertiger
24 August 2007

"Someone who chooses a name like "cybertiger" is obviously compensating for an inability to make it with women. While muttering about "the Jews," he's doubtless rubbing his swastika and thinking how nice it is to have found kindrid haters on the lunatic left."

I smell the distinct "odour of panic", the sweet, sickly stench of fear and the rank pungence of hysteria. Hysterical nonsense does not impress, does not win arguments or win over hearts or minds. You've lost it Brian!

report this comment pugnax
25 August 2007

Cyber, do your research: there are no polar bears in the Antarctic and will probably be none anywhere soon. Apart from that, your postings are pretty cogent. For my small part, I have begun boycotting Kedem juices and honey--good products, if overpriced. I am disturbed by our unwholesome American-Israeli axis (which is the dog and which is the tail?) So many otherwise humane and educated folks seem morally ambiguous and suddenly, and concepts of justice tend to evaporate when the Zionist state is discussed (which happens infrequently). And then there are the "Christian" yahoos who, though they incline to anti-Semitism, are super boosters of Israel (whose actual people, they figure, will all ultimately burn in hell anyway). I recall m former senator Jesse Helms, an intensely racist and Christian gentleman, was at one time quite unfriendly to Israel because of its religion and what he perceived as "socialist" tendencies under Labor government, flipped his attitude and became a super booster of the Zionist state upon viewing (c. 1985) news film of a group of IDF busily breaking the arm of a Palestinian. Warmed the old guy's heart!

report this comment pmendes
25 August 2007

ALL YOU ARE DOING HERE IS DEMONISING ONE SIDE OF THE CONFLICT. PEACE IS BASED ON COMPROMISE FROM BOTH SIDES.

In any event, I'm sure even you don't believe the Australian government is "perfect" and/or "unbiased."

EVEN ME. I'VE SPENT 11 YEARS CRITICIZING JUST ABOUT EVERY HOWARD GOVERNMENT POLICY. SEE MY BOOKS, AUSTRALIA'S WELFARE WARS ETC.

But correct me if I'm wrong: you've remained a perfectly law-abiding citizen, perhaps in the knowledge that no human institution or system (let alone one that has to reconcile the interests of almost 200 nations) could ever be "perfect" or "unbiased."

IT HAS BEEN DEVALUED BY SOME WHO CAN'T DISTINGUISH BETWEEN REASONABLE CRITICISMS OF A COUNTRY'S POLICIES, AND RACISM. BUT EQUALLY OTHERS ARGUE ERRONEOUSLY THAT ANTI-ZIONISM NEVER INVOLVES ANTI-SEMITISM. THE ENGAGE GROUP IN THE UK HAVE BRILLIANTLY EXPOSED THIS FALLACY. IF YOU ACCUSE ISRAEL AND/OR JEWS OF BEING NAZIS ETC, THEN YOU ARE AN ANTI-SEMITE AND SHOULD BE EXPELLED FROM ANY SELF-RESPECTING LEFT GROUP.

PHILIP

report this comment Nadav Katz
25 August 2007

Gnuneo,

You are a brave soul, wishing to explain away the relentless obsessive attack by Neo-Socialists on the liberal democratic Jewish state of Israel:

1) "There is a very clear and deliberate attempt at ethnic cleansing, the dispossession and destruction of an entire people, based upon racist grounds". – Where, when, how, by whom and why? Making such a statement when factually it has no basis in reality is akin to blood libel of a whole people, the Jewish people, whose nation-state you accuse.

2) "There is the utter contempt shown to international law that Israel has ignored every UN resolution, and has thumbed its nose at the Geneva accords". – Once again, short of slogans, can the esteemed author back up his/her accusation? Of course not, because this statement is pure and simple, a slogan produced in the workshops of the Neo-Socialists of this world.

3) "That this historic injustice done to the Palestinians is now the very clear crux of most of the main conflict points between the two great systems - the (post-Christian) West, and Islam. That certain insane elements in the West who call themselves 'Christian' are working to start WW3 through there, believing in medieval gobbledygook, and conspiring to make themselves Global Emperors". – What "historic injustice done to the Palestinians and by whom"? And what does Christianity have to do with the Jewish people and the Jewish state of Israel? – No answers here either of course.

4) "That the Zionists have used European guilt to deliberately obfuscate what is actually happening, deliberately manipulated European sensitivity to ram through their agenda that is so similar to the German Nazi concept of lebensraum, and 'racial purity'. (unsurprising, as these elements came through from the Bible)". – What our brave author means to write here, but can for it would be politically incorrect to do so is that the Jews who have conspired with one another have used European guilt, while at the same time forgetting the fact that Zionism actually came about as a national liberation movement during the second half of the 19th century, and on the basis of the universally accepted right of peoples to national self-determination has been recognized as the Jewish people's national movement to establish its home in Eretz Israel/Palestine as was expressed in 1917 in the form of the Balfour Declaration, as has been accepted by the League of Nations, and eventually was recognized by the United Nations in 1947.

5) "That we judge them harsher than we do say the Sudanese govt, because they are 'closer' to us, geographically, culturally and physically, and are therefore more real. (I said not all the reasons are noble ones, but this is also true)". – Or, in other words, singling out a specific people, a specific race to be relentlessly and obsessively attacked, and isn't this a form of racism? Anti-Jewish racism as has been incorporated to the supposed Socialist ideology of some in Britain?

6) "Because what is happening to the Palestinians IS wrong, and a moral person and people WILL stand up and oppose it". – Yet, the same "moral" person of Britain says little if anything about on-going slavery of children, of women of migrant workers in the Arab world, nothing, and the same "moral" person has not yet reacted to the mass murders of hundreds of thousands of people in Algeria, in the Sudan. The same "moral" person appears to care not about the struggle of the Kurdish people to national self-determination and statehood, because I assume, the struggle has been against Muslim and Arab countries and not against a Jewish one. And finally, what has this "moral" person done to alleviate the status of the Roma in this "moral" person's back yard – throughout Europe!

To a Jewish observer of the obsessive need by members of certain "progressive" and "socialist" circles in Europe in general and Britain in particular to single out, attack and demonize the Jewish state of Israel based on non-facts is clearly the latest form of anti-Jewish racism or if you will, Neo-Socialism. And as Jews, people who collectively have experienced this attitude towards us for centuries, especially in Europe, we know to recognize it when it shows up, be it camouflaged as "anti-Zionism", "anti-Israeli policies", "anti-occupation" or as any other "anti". We know the nature of the "anti" that we face, sadly, sadly indeed.

report this comment ikotubo
25 August 2007

To PMMENDES: Your accusation that I equated Jews with the Nazis (when you know full well that I have made no such suggestion), merely confirms my view of people in the pro-Zionist camp, and I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before I become an "anti-semite." But, again, be warned: if you believe that you're doing the Jewish cause any good, you've achieved the opposite, because you've devalued these terms through overuse.

Also, I note that your only response to my basic, indisputable facts about Israel's attitude towards the UN (an institution that has received the support of distinguished Jews throughout its history) is to claim that they amount to Israel's "demonization." Well, I should have known better.

Regarding your views about your government, I'm glad that you agree that no such institution or system is "perfect" or "unbiased." As for your book/s, thanks for your invitation, but the last thing I need is to have to read a whole thesis built on manifest irrationality - and believe me, there are literally millions of them out there. As it happens, I do have friends at Monash, and I know it is a reputable institution. But you've done that reputation no favours here, it seems. How sad!

report this comment ECG
25 August 2007

How did I came to think that the first historical instance of racist behaviour ever came from the jewish people... when identifying themselves on the basis of their apartenance to the only Juda tribe that did not mixe with the rest as all the others did...?

Bright exchanges are mostly taking place here, soiled with only a few hysterical reactions out of panic ... I won't quit my personal boycott as yet and hopefully wait for the change of attitude that needs to come from israeli instances

report this comment Nadav Katz
25 August 2007

ECG,

How many more peoples, races do you boycott if any?

Nadav

report this comment desertlion
25 August 2007

brian from toronto

from your letters on this subject shows a very strange sort of logic can i ask if you are irish

report this comment Nadav Katz
25 August 2007

"It is enough to look at the evolution of the territory of the Israeli state to see that there is nothing fair or innocent in the way it approaches its neighbours" Writes ECG.

Yet, short of this elegantly appearing slogan and empty statement there is no substance to back it up, none; as there is non to my other question about the number of additional peoples, races ECG boycotts if any.

You see, this is the depth of understanding of the situation about the region of South West Asia (Middle East for Eurocentrics), on the basis of which sloganeering can flourish, especially when it is aimed at a singled out people, a race, and its nation-state of Israel – the Jewish state of Israel.

report this comment pmendes
25 August 2007

Ikotubo: I didn't argue anywhere that you had personally equated Israel with the Nazis. I said that if you or any other anti-Zionist fundamentalists did so, then you could reasonably be accused of anti-Semitic rhetoric. It is clear from your obsession with the UN and other one-sided statements that you are simply interested in propagandizing, rather than debating. My basic point again is that Pilger's advocacy of a Greater Palestine in place of Israel is incompatible with Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconcilitation. Those who defend Pilger are implicitly if not explicitly endorsing bloodshed for the next 100 years.

Philip

report this comment Brian from Toronto
25 August 2007

ECG

If you want to boycott Israel, stop posting.

You support Israel every time you use your computer with its Zionist created chip.

If you want to boycott Israel throw out your cell phone, too.

If you want to support Israel, insist on your doctor treat you with nothing more complicated than a thermometer and aspirin.

You let them use anything high tech on you, you're likely breaking your boycott.

Your "boycott" notion is a pose. There are useful ways to support peace in the Middle East. There are ways to help a Palestinian state come into existence.

But your boycott is a fashion accessory, a protest button that says, "I hate Israel."

This boycott stuff is damaging the UK, though. Over here, UK academics are perceived as racist morons. This is grossly unfair, as only their union leaders are racist morons.

As are, of course a few contributors to the Nation.

ECG, at least you're an equal opportunity hater – you don’t just hate Israelis, you’re an anti-Irish bigot, too.

report this comment Brian from Toronto
25 August 2007

Ikotubo seems eager to show off his mail-order degree in international law from the Jihadi University of Tehran.

Herr Doktor Ikotobu makes a fuss about the international court’s ruling on Israel’s security wall. What Ikotubo hasn’t noticed is that the court’s ruling was advisory. It was bad advice, and therefore it’s being ignored.

Nothing unusual there. The international court’s advisory opinions are almost always ignored, by everybody.

Ikotubo also makes a fuss about Israel ignoring the UN General Assembly. The General Assembly spends most of its time condemning one scapegoat country in order to allow serious violators of international norms to escape censure.

The game is undignified, but not serious. General Assembly resolutions are like advisory opinions – they’re non-binding.

This means they’re supposed to be ignored. Heavens, can you imagine the mess if people took the General Assembly seriously? Well, it would never happen because everyone would quit first.

Seriously, when people like Ikotubo prattle on about the law, we know...

(a) they're ignorant

(b) they conceive of the law, not as an instrument of justice, but as a stick they seize to beat the object of their hatred

report this comment Brian from Toronto
25 August 2007

I’d planned an outing to the zoo yesterday, but went to the Nation website instead.

I’m amazed. We just don’t have anything this exotic in Canada. I mean you have Cybertiger - an actual neo-Nazi posting here – and he’s not banned. Other posters don’t even object to him.

Indeed, at the Nation a Nazi hardly even seem odd. Guano calls on Israelis to “build huge great gas chambers” to start exterminating Palestinians, just so that he can confirm his bad opinion of Jews.

ECG claims Jews invented racism. In North America, this would reliably identify him as a neo-Nazi, but in Britain apparently I need a whole new field guide, as this sort of open Jew-hatred apparently comes from the left, as well.

What’s most astonishing is these creatures show no self-consciousness. They believe they’re normal!

It’s all revolting of course, but fascinating, too.

Ta-ta. Today, I am going to the zoo. Alas, the animals are going to seem terribly urbane in comparison with the primitives at the nation.

report this comment ikotubo
25 August 2007

To PMENDES: I'm sorry that I appear not to be interested in debating, but it depends on the subject-matter, doesn't it? If my opponents' position is to describe the use of helicopter gunships against stone-throwing kids (and I'm not accusing you of this) as "a conflict," or to describe a situation upon which the world's only final moral and legal arbiter has adjudicated (and which even Israel's own rulers have accepted - namely, a two-State solution) as "complex," then what would a debate achieve? Some policies/deeds, in my view, are simply not debatable - like slavery, Nazism or apartheid. Indeed, to debate the merits of such issues can itself amount to supporting the perpetrator/s.

In any event, contrary to your opinionI have, on this very site, challenged the Islamic/Arab world to condemn the ghastly atrocities committed by their fellow "brothers" in Darfur (which, to be sure, is much greater in scale than anything the Israelis have ever done), and to date, none has done so. I leave you with your own conclusions in this regard.

As for my apparent "obsession" with the UN, I plead gulty as charged, and for a very good reason: It may be a flawed and discredited organization, but I challenge you to come up with a more credible alternative. The UN is like the notion of democracy: few believe in it, until when faced with the alternative.

report this comment gnuneo
25 August 2007

nadav katz

"1) "There is a very clear and deliberate attempt at ethnic cleansing, the dispossession and destruction of an entire people, based upon racist grounds". – Where, when, how, by whom and why? Making such a statement when factually it has no basis in reality is akin to blood libel of a whole people, the Jewish people, whose nation-state you accuse."

very simple question - has there been a policy of building jewish-only settlements on palestinian land?

yes or no?

and if so, has then israel found a unique method of creating extra land from nowhere?

no? So where does that land come from? Is there not geographic dislocation based upon ethnic grounds, imposed by the overwhelming military force of Israel?

simple mathematical logic.

"2) "There is the utter contempt shown to international law that Israel has ignored every UN resolution, and has thumbed its nose at the Geneva accords". – Once again, short of slogans, can the esteemed author back up his/her accusation? Of course not, because this statement is pure and simple, a slogan produced in the workshops of the Neo-Socialists of this world."

again, very simple question: has israel built settlements upon palestinian land it has invaded and occupied?

a yes or no will suffice, although a "ur an anti-semite" is more common. I have hopes for you to do better.

"3) "That this historic injustice done to the Palestinians is now the very clear crux of most of the main conflict points between the two great systems - the (post-Christian) West, and Islam. That certain insane elements in the West who call themselves 'Christian' are working to start WW3 through there, believing in medieval gobbledygook, and conspiring to make themselves Global Emperors". – What "historic injustice done to the Palestinians and by whom"? And what does Christianity have to do with the Jewish people and the Jewish state of Israel? – No answers here either of course."

let me see, there were the largely peasant society of palestine, a feudal system in fact. Then, because of events they have *nothing* to do with, suddenly it is decided that they should become home to millions of europeans, who regard them with racist and religious displeasure.

i would regard that as injustice.

Then there is the ongoing occupation by a regional superpower, and the relegation of the remnants of palestine into divided bantustans.

i would regard that also as injustice.

what would *you* call it?

what does zionism have to do with apoplectic - sorry "apocalyptic" - christianity? You are either just attempting to score childish points in the hope i won't bother responding, or else you are so profoundly intellectually challenged its really not worth responding. I'll be kind and go with the former.

"4) "That the Zionists have used European guilt to deliberately obfuscate what is actually happening, deliberately manipulated European sensitivity to ram through their agenda that is so similar to the German Nazi concept of lebensraum, and 'racial purity'. (unsurprising, as these elements came through from the Bible)". – What our brave author means to write here, but can for it would be politically incorrect to do so is that the Jews who have conspired with one another have used European guilt, while at the same time forgetting the fact that Zionism actually came about as a national liberation movement during the second half of the 19th century, and on the basis of the universally accepted right of peoples to national self-determination has been recognized as the Jewish people's national movement to establish its home in Eretz Israel/Palestine as was expressed in 1917 in the form of the Balfour Declaration, as has been accepted by the League of Nations, and eventually was recognized by the United Nations in 1947."

how very sweet, and one can also assume that the Polish were also quite happy to have their land divided up in Great Power meetings. It just makes all hunky-dory when men gather round and write things down, doesnt it?

i'm just astonished that zionists don't seem to be able to grasp that palestinians may have a "right to national self-determination", but perhaps that really only applies to 'The Chosen People', and not 'inferior' racial groups?

"Or, in other words, singling out a specific people, a specific race to be relentlessly and obsessively attacked, and isn't this a form of racism? Anti-Jewish racism as has been incorporated to the supposed Socialist ideology of some in Britain?"

yawn, could you just save my time and write "anti-semite", it cuts to the point and saves both of us a lot of bother reading and writing it.

tedious, infantile, and now running out of steam as well. The only thing that worries me is, when you attack moderates ever more stridently with your little slogans like that, then you run the very real risk of making the term "anti-semite" lose any semantic meaning whatsoever.

you should think LOOOONG and hard about that, and if it is an achievement you really want to have on your mantle-piece.

"6) "Because what is happening to the Palestinians IS wrong, and a moral person and people WILL stand up and oppose it". – Yet, the same "moral" person of Britain says little if anything about on-going slavery of children, of women of migrant workers in the Arab world, nothing, and the same "moral" person has not yet reacted to the mass murders of hundreds of thousands of people in Algeria, in the Sudan. The same "moral" person appears to care not about the struggle of the Kurdish people to national self-determination and statehood, because I assume, the struggle has been against Muslim and Arab countries and not against a Jewish one. And finally, what has this "moral" person done to alleviate the status of the Roma in this "moral" person's back yard – throughout Europe!"

personal smear - gotta go for the ad hominems when the going gets tough eh?

in fact, you know nothing about what i write on, you know nothing about my opinions on these topics. I could post links, but you are so clearly that kind of dishonest person who will just attempt to smear, that there is little point.

BTW, i spent 4yrs of my life in an aid organisation, and i have actually visited turkish kurdistan, and heard of the atrocities committed by turkish forces from first-person witnesses.

i doubt you've done anything else except smash your rifle butt into the faces of small palestinian children out of fun. See, two can play the ad hominem game.

"To a Jewish observer of the obsessive need by members of certain "progressive" and "socialist" circles in Europe in general and Britain in particular to single out, attack and demonize the Jewish state of Israel based on non-facts is clearly the latest form of anti-Jewish racism or if you will, Neo-Socialism. And as Jews, people who collectively have experienced this attitude towards us for centuries, especially in Europe, we know to recognize it when it shows up, be it camouflaged as "anti-Zionism", "anti-Israeli policies", "anti-occupation" or as any other "anti". We know the nature of the "anti" that we face, sadly, sadly indeed."

yet one of the strongest anti-zionist voices comes from one of the jewish communities here in the UK, who understood and wrote eloquently well before the Balfour doctrine that attempting to establish a jewish homeland in Palestine was suicidal, that it would lead to a state of eternal warfare, that the moral character of Judaism would become indelibly tarnished through such a conflict.

because you see, many jews who have not been brainwashed by the zionist programme can still think for themselves, they have not the lemming-like desire to sacrifice themselves for ideological and racist fervour.

have you never even considered that before the creation of israel, psychotics like hitler could never dream of extinguishing Judaism entirely, because of the diaspora through even muslim lands. Now the jews are almost entirely located in two areas - Israel, and new york.

do you truly think the christian fundies who are pulling so many strings in the US, are entirely trustworthy bed-partners for global Judaism? It is part of their beliefs that israel be destroyed in a holy war, and that the few remaining jews be forcibly converted to christianity.

use that bloody brain that was given you, and THINK!

nazism is not restricted to germans, or europeans.

you already have all the hints, open your mind and question your assumptions. The time is running out.

שָׁלוֹם

report this comment Nadav Katz
25 August 2007

Ilan Pappe whose name is often mentioned by critics of Israel is a dissident lecturer of history at Haifa University in Israel. Professionally, few people, both in Israel and abroad, respect his work and would wish to be associated with him; the main reason being his conceptual and philosophical approach to the study of history and historiography. His, is based on the writing of narratives, the stories if you will, as perceived and told by people, with only secondary importance attributed to actual evidence and documentation. This approach may or may not have been influenced by his upbringing. Mr. Pappe was for many years an active member of the Young Communist Alliance of Israel (banqi) and then an active member of the Communist Party, (maqi), and this during the Stalinist period during which Communists were directly involved in the re-writing and story telling of history for the sake of justifying political ideology and action. But Mr. Pappe has gone beyond even the Communist Party that at least officially subscribes to the universally accepted right of peoples to national self-determination and statehood, including of course the Jewish people and its state, the Jewish state of Israel. In fact, one of the most prominent members of the Communist Party of Israel at the time, Mr. Meir Vilner, was one of the people who signed on Israel's Declaration of Indepenced, 14 May 1948, for which translation into English I strongly recommend that you Google. He, Pappe that is, has for some time said nothing about the right of Israel to exist, but has called for a single Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. To illustrate his call, one can find at his personal Web Site two Palestinian Arab flags, yet not a single Israeli one. The Jewish state of Israel, in other words, must go, eliminated according to this "objective" scholar. I, therefore, suggest when the name of Ilan Pappe comes up one should consider it within the proper context just provided.

report this comment Nadav Katz
25 August 2007

Gnuneo,

1) "Has there been a policy of building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land?" – the answer is simple, no. Sure settlements have been built in the disputed territories of Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the Gaza Strip, but there has not been a policy to build those villages and towns on privately owned land belonging to Palestinian Arabs, although in fairness I must admit that sporadically that has taken placed and is being remedied by the Israeli authorities. Neither the purpose nor the result of building constructing villages and towns in any way have anything to do with "ethnic cleansing". Indeed, there has been a substantial increase in Palestinian Arab population in the disputed territories since Israel took over in 1967 and not a decrease which what ethnic cleansing connotes. For the most part the land used for the construction of villages and towns have been unpopulated state lands previously under the control of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan that was the "sovereign" in what you call the West Bank, and Egypt in the Gaza District.

2) "Has Israel built settlements upon Palestinian land it has invaded and occupied?" No. Israel has not invaded Palestinian land. Israel became the legally occupying power having fought and won a war initiated by its three Arab neighbouring countries of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. There was not then, there had not been and there is not now a political entity called Palestine hence Israel has not invaded, has not occupied and has not settled upon Palestinian land.

3) You may wish to regard as injustice whatever you wish, yet the Jewish emigrants to Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) since the second part of the 19th century, people from Yemen, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Iraq as well as Poland, Lithuania and Russia came to this Land legally, acquired land and other properties, established agricultural, construction and industrial collectives, developed industries as well as urban working and middle class. What is not just about it?? During Israel's War of Independence which actually began the day after the UN voted to establish a Jewish and an Arab state for each in this shared country of ours, 29 Nov 1947, the Arab leadership rejected the UN resolution and initiated a war of terror at the Jewish community which had accepted the UN resolution. Five additional Arab states joined this war on 15 May 1948. In the process of repelling the aggressors, Israel indeed has managed to take over additional territory. Also in this process 350,000 to 700,000 local Arabs fled their homes and properties and became refugees and displaced persons. Is it really Israel's responsibility for this tragic event that came about as a result of the Arab war on a UN resolution but which was directed at the Jewish community of the country??

4) I am yet to understand you disputing my point, which I assume you have not. Instead you write: "I'm just astonished that Zionists don't seem to be able to grasp that Palestinians may have a 'right to national self-determination', but perhaps that really only applies to the 'Chosen People', and not 'inferior' racial groups". You see, if you were less consumed by slogan and actually listened and objectively observed Judaism, Zionism and the Jewish state of Israel you would know that: 1) Being chosen in Judaism does not mean being superior but rather being chosen to worship and serve God in the way he wishes us to do so. 2) We certainly do not consider any human being and any people or race to be 'inferior' as you write. It is simply neither part of Jewish tradition and teaching or that of our national political ideology of Zionism. And 3) Zionism has always accepted the universally acceptable right of all peoples to national self-determination, including that of the Palestinian Arab people. This, after all was the basis of the UN resolution of 29 Nov 1947 that the Zionist leadership accepted, unlike that of the Palestinian Arab leadership of course, which called for the establishment of an Arab state here. This was also the basis of our former Prime Minister, the late Mr. Menachem Begin's offer to the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley back in 1979 to establish their autonomy that would have evolved in time to statehood. This was also the basis of the Oslo Accords, at the end of which a Palestinian Arab state was to be established and was indeed offered by Israel's prime minister at the time, Mr. Ehud Barak. This has been the basis for the Roadmap to Peace accepted by our former Prime Minister Mr. Ariel Sharon who called from the UN podium for the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state. Perhaps it is time for you to go back and review the real historic events and processes instead of lobbing accusations without any basis?

6) This is not a personal anything. Mine is an honest question for which I am waiting for an answer! Indeed, re-read your language and ask yourself who is being personal and who is writing about the activities of the other without know a thing about him!

I shall leave the discussion about Hitlerism, Christianity and the world as some perceive it from a view point of fantasy to another time. It is simply not related to the subject at hand, and besides, I prefer to deal with reality and to do so rationally.

Thank you.

Nadav

Jerusalem, Israel

report this comment Nadav Katz
25 August 2007

In my post above I wrote about Mr. Ilan Pappe. I neglected to indicate that the reason I did so was because the author of this article made an admiring reference to him. It is of course all right for this author to appreciate Mr. Pappe as a historian, yet he should know that if he wants to be associated with Mr. Pappe, he may be perceived by serious historians and readers of his articles accordingly!

report this comment Cybertiger
25 August 2007

To pugnax, who posted last night.

Thank you pugnax, my pugnacious wide-awake friend from North Carolina - for spotting the deliberate polar bear mistake. And I appreciate too, the credence and cogency you give to 'Israel in Texas' as the final 'life saving' solution to the Middle East problem.

If only more Americans would wake up and smell the rancid coffee brewed by Israeli folk today.

You may remember that our elderly friend Jesse Helms was not a big fan of the United Nations and even less so of the International Criminal Court. However, I suspect he harbored a cunning plan for the Jews with their ruthless homeing instincts. Were the great man a cogent force today, he would surely donate his very own moral compass to those wayward Jewish pigeons ... and guide them home to North Carolina.

report this comment Nadav Katz
25 August 2007

And what are your answers, Mr. Cybertiger, to Tom Friedman's questions? Any substantive response to the reporrting of this fine international journalist?

I also invite Ms. Wood to share her view regarding this journalist and commentator's experiences. Would you, Ms. Wood? Could you?

I am asking this question again of course, having noticed the name of some here whose entire wish is to mock but who are not capable it appears to put together a single sentence with substative and rational explanation in this site for "thinking people".

report this comment ECG
25 August 2007

Brian from Toronto, Nadav,

with all my respects, you are wrong. At least, on two counts:

1. I do not boycott people. I do boycott actions.

2. If boycott is too closely associated with hatred to you _ as it seems so many things are_ then replace boycott with refuse to accept, and do not feel obliged to associate any feelings to it.

Take it just as what it is: an action in response to another action.

report this comment alzwick13
25 August 2007

ECG,

I am amazed at the (I’m going to be charitable) ignorance of your comments. First, you can't boycott actions. How does one not buy from actions, or interact with them? You can boycott people, stores, or countries. You can't boycott violence for example; you can boycott a company or group that supports violence.

The issue of your alleged anti-Semitism does not have to do with your use of boycott. It has to do with the statement you made that Jews started racism. You then said you would not "quit my personal boycott" Well, you never said who you boycotted. Since your earlier comment was about all Jews, it's a normal assumption you boycott all Jews. If you boycott all Jews because you believe all Jews started racism, you are an anti-Semite.

By the way, read some of the bible and you will see how ignorant your first statement is. First off Judah was only one Jewish tribe.

So, you are not just responding to an action, but are showing an anti-Jewish, and very ignorant worldview.

report this comment modernityblog
26 August 2007

What a slapdash piece of journalism from John Pilger, the New Statesman editor should be ashamed of himself for this sloppy article.

Perhaps next time the New Statesman should commission the people at Engage (http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/) to write a piece instead?

I was going to pick up a copy of the New Statesman this week, but never again, such an appalling rant from John Pilger (an otherwise competent journalist) does not assist the New Statesman's reputation or circulation figures.

The circulation figures for the New Statesman are apparently less than 30,000, it seems that with shoddy journalism like this article those figures won't increase much.

report this comment Nadav Katz
26 August 2007

ECG, Since you boycott actions (?), what other actions have you been boycotting? Or has it been only the actions of the Jewish people of Israel, whether they have been involved or not involved in any actions, and if so, why? I have been seeking an answer from you on this question, but somehow you appear to attempt to evade it. Why??!!

report this comment Cybertiger
26 August 2007

@Nadav Katz

"And what are your answers, Mr. Cybertiger, to Tom Friedman's questions? Any substantive response to the reporrting of this fine international journalist? "

Thomas Friedman tweets, twitches, confabulates and twitters tall stories. Tom Friedman is a feeble fabler, another homing pigeon with a faulty moral compass and a dreadful sense of direction. Thus, he's had to buy an Amerikan road map - to perpetual war - to compensate for his appalling directional deficiencies. And, off course, he doesn't realise the reality, that the American Way is the wrong direction.

PS. In the end, the Semitic pigeon will flee the Middle Eastern nest and find its way through parted seas to Texas ... North Carolina ... or possibly home in on the arid nuclear waste dump of the Nevada desert. There, 'The Birds' will finally settle, lay eggs and raise some cuckoo chicks.

PPS. Mr Katz: your wings are not flapping fast enough. Illan Pappe's moral compass has taken him to a safe house on a commune, in a kibbutz, at the University of Exeter.

PPPS. These days, these end times, Jerusalem is not a safe nest for cuckoos. It's time one flew over it. Has someone clipped your wings Mr Katz?

report this comment Nadav Katz
26 August 2007

Cybertiger, now that you have managed to badmouth and mock Tom Friedman and elevate the image of Ilan Pappe – all of which say more about you than about them, incidentally – what substantive answers do you have for Friedman's questions? Or substance and reality is not your specialty and therefore, but mocking the "Semites" of this country and the cleansing it of them is of higher importance in view of the world?

report this comment gnuneo
26 August 2007

odin88: you are so blatantly a zionist front, its not even amusing.

your kind of misinformation attempts may work in the average yank media, but i'm afraid you're really out of your league here.

i guess your next step would have been to cheer hamas?

get a life, get a brain, and most of all - go away.

report this comment spkurer
26 August 2007

There are so many distortions and lies in this piece it really is difficult to know where to begin-

so just one single point- 'the so called ethnic cleansing of Israel"-

Please Mr Pilger-where on earth do you get this complete nonsense-go to any hospital in Israel- Palestinian patients,palestinian doctors

Go to the main Universities-Haifa,Tel Aviv,Hebrew University, ( I could mention many more) Palestinian academics, Palestinian students,

The shops, the villages, the towns,the hotels-Moslems,Jews,Christians. Ethnic Cleansing? You demean the term. I live in Talpiot-an hour ago I went to or local pharmacy- run by Palestinians.

Your piece is a disgrace to journalism.

ps- How many Jews could be found in similar institutions in Israel's surrounding countries where so many lived before 1948?

report this comment gnuneo
26 August 2007

"And don't you dare call me "anti-Semitic" because I am not. The truth of the matter is that if Hitler got rid of the Jewish cancer".

sure sure. Its odd that in a thread and article that has mangled the classic "ur an anti-semite" line of tedium when ever anyone criticises zionism, you crop up as a classic anti-semite, claiming you are not.

makes intelligent people wonder, you see.

...so you are an "american patriot" who despises american control over your media and society? From which one can infer you don't regard american jews as americans.

(but again, you are "not an anti-semite", we mustn't forget that, its very important we realise that blatant anti-semites say they are "not anti-semites".)

well, many are sick and tired of WASP control over america, seeing as how theyre the ones who have actually given the orders to attempt world domination, and are deliberately preventing global action upon global warming.

or is that the "evul jewz" as well?

listen Mr Mossad, you're really not fooling anyone. Not on a NS forum anyway.

hook, sling it.

report this comment simonpsc
27 August 2007

The doctrine of the 'war on terror' is Sharon's idea. During his government one third of the poorer segments of the population last one quarter of their income through cuts in welfare entitlements and the richer third took the benefits. The Left had no response to Sharon's demand that the poor support him or face the threat from Palestinian 'terrorists'. Sharon's doctrine was take up by the neoconservatives and then by Bush. So the 'war on terror' is an Israeli invention and by accepting it we are all dragged into support for Israel. Clever indeed. And many of the neoconservatives are American Jewish Zionists - Perle (the architect of the Iraq War), Wolfovitz (the advocate for the New American century)

report this comment taghioff.info
27 August 2007

I love the smell of polemic in the morning.

Nothing quite like Israel-Palestine to get the blood pumping.

Except it may not matter too much: If climate change bites, and water and grain shortages set in, the Israelis will need their nukes to defend the aquifers they have stolen.

The Palestinians, already reduced to drinking half-salty water, will be in the worst kind of trouble, but the rest of the Middle East is not exactly going to have an easy time either.

Set in this kind of context, one wonders what all the fuss is about, can't we get on with something more likely to save lives in future?

report this comment ikotubo
27 August 2007

After reading some of the posts on this site, I'm left in no doubt that John Pilger was right: The pro-Zionists obviously can't see anything wrong with Israeli atrocities, no matter how abominable. By definition, these are fanatical adherents of an unashamedly racist ideology. How can the plight of the Palestinians matter to people like these? And, by and large, they enjoy the support of the global media, to whom the only lives that matter are Jewish ones.

In response, we have those who believe that Hitler was right about the Jews! How on earth did we get here? How did a people who suffered so much (together with millions of Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals, people of mixed race origin, Communists, and anyone who didn't fit the distorted Nazi worldview, by the way), but enjoyed so much international goodwill soon afterwards, end up being in this situation where many now want them wiped off the face of the earth? How did they end up employing methods that some have equated with those of the Nazis themselves (like collective punishment, assassinations, etc)? Can anyone educate me please - without the cheap and silly platitudes that I've already read, that is.

report this comment Cybertiger
27 August 2007

Mr. Katz said,

“Cybertiger, now that you have managed to badmouth and mock Tom Friedman and elevate the image of Ilan Pappe – all of which say more about you than about them, incidentally – what substantive answers do you have for Friedman's questions?”

Big Cybercat says,

For vengeance, for incitement, for fun? Why? The Israeli defence force is engaged in shooting Palestinian children: more than 900 kids have been shot since the first uprising. Why? Why do Israelis behave in such an ugly and brutal way? The defending army behaves in an offensive manner and acts with complete immunity to prosecution. Why? Why no boycott of the democratic Israeli regime? In my humble opinion, Thomas Friedman is a rank purveyor of sophistry, a blind, deaf and dumb sophist. Why? Why not let us hear your answers Mr. Katz?

report this comment Nadav Katz
27 August 2007

So, Mr. Cybertiger, your answer to Tom Friedman's questions - which you do not answer of course - is more baseless slogans, more spitting at the face of the Jew, be he a defender of the Jewish state from those who set out to eliminate it and annihilate its Jewish population, or a defender of liberal journalism. This, plus some of the pearls expressed above by others about Jews in a British "progressive" publication is a good illustration of my accusation that what we deal with here are Neo-Socialists, those harmnizing their supposed view of Socialism with Islamist and/or anti-Jewish racism.

Are you, mr./ms. Cybertiger, one of them perhaps?

report this comment JL 27 August 2007

The amount of irrational hatred being displayed in this discussion is deeply disturbing. As a non-Jew I am in essential agreement with Nadav Katz that a significant proportion of the anti-Israel comments made by allegedly 'liberal' and left-wing intellectuals in the UK are merely a cover for anti-Semitism. The inconsistency, and ultimate hypocrisy, inherent in a boycott of Israeli academic institutions is strikingly evident. Why boycott Israel in particular when regular human rights abuses are occurring in totalitarian regimes such as Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, China etc?

The only conclusion that one can draw from this proposed boycott is that the UCU is at least implicitly anti-Semitic, and that it has no real understanding of the enduring complexity of the culture and politics of the Middle East. I doubt if any but very few of the academics calling for this boycott have made a serious study of the region and its history which would, of course, include mastery of modern Hebrew and the Arabic dialects. It may be that such a reflective approach based on the evaluation of original language sources, and examination of the contribution of European foreign policy in destabilizing the region, is beyond the capacity of these polemicists.

The settlements in the West Bank are clearly immoral, but why no parallel boycott of academic institutions in Islamic countries that continue to sanction arbitrary systems of government and theocratic bigotry manifested in such phenomena as homophobia and oppressive patriarchal social structures. There can be no real peace and prosperity in the Middle East until this issue of retarded development in the Islamic world is addressed.

Regarding the efficacity of a general intellectual and economic boycott of Israel, as someone of Afrikaans ethnicity it is difficult to accept the rationale given for attempting such a measure. It is doubtful whether economic etc sanctions were a sufficient condition for the destruction of Apartheid. The real nail in the coffin for that iniquitous system was the withdrawal of theological support for aparte ontwikkeling by the various Dutch Reformed churches in 1985. Anybody who knows the strength of Christianity in South Africa will understand the effect that such a pronouncement would have had in undermining the ideological foundations of the regime. This is rarely commented on by self-congratulatory British 'liberals' who wish to display their immense generosity to to those unfortunate people who do not live in civilized Europe.

By all means let us force a withdrawal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but let us not fall again into the Hitlerian stereotypes of the mid-Twentieth Century. The CUC would rather form a foolish alliance with nihilistic militant Islamist organizations than acknowledge the complexities of an issue that sees victims and perpetrators on all sides. A little knowledge really is dangerous.

report this comment ikotubo
27 August 2007

To JL: Thanks for a generally rational post. I feel compelled to mention, however, that although Israel is not the only nation on earth to violate universally agreed norms of behaviour (and you only need to look at Darfur next door, and the fact that no Islamic/Arab regime has even deemed it necessary to condemn the ghastly atrocities by their fellow "brothers" there), it has allowed the injustices against the Palestinians (who, by the way, are only marginally better treated in places such as Lebanon and Jordan) to fester for far too long. I say "too long" not because it is the longest running occupation in history, but because Israel has persistently scuppered every opportunity to bring about a just settlement. And it's not as if we don't know what that "just settlement" is: The UN has pronounced on it, both Israeli and Palestinian leaders have accepted it (or at least the principle of it).

For a people who suffered so much under Hitler, and who have generally enjoyed so much international good will, the world expects better.

report this comment armannajmi
27 August 2007

dear sir, i am at a loss as what to say about the plight of the falasteeni people.their self respect has been thrown to the winds.i dont know how long they willsuffer like this.the conscie4nce keepers of the universe are happy to punish them like this.their leader yasir arafat was killed by those harbingers of democracy n secularism.what is the use of passing these comments.sorry sir:but falasteenis are bring humiliated & brought to subhuman level.what q shame for the civilized world.are they really civilized.arman najmi

report this comment Cybertiger
27 August 2007

And what are your answers, Mr. Katz, to Cybertiger's questions? Any substantive response to the fine repurrting of this international cyberfeline?

report this comment Nadav Katz
28 August 2007

Ikotubo,

The relevant UN resolution to which you refer is UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 which has been the basis of all peace agreements reached between Israel and its neighbors so far, including the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap to Peace. Following is that resolution. Would you please let us know where Israel has failed more than the other parties in bringing about an accommodation of peaceful coexistence to this country?

U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 242

NOVEMBER 22, 1967

The Security Council,

Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,

Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace, in which every State in the area can live in security,

Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,

Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

Affirms further the necessity

For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;

For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;

For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones;

Requests the Secretary General to designate a Special Representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution;

Requests the Secretary-General to report to the

Security Council on the progress of the efforts of the

Special Representative as soon as possible.

………………

Cybertiger,

I have not called for a boycott, nor have I called as you have for the "Semites" to leave Eretz Israel/Palestine nor I have not mocked anyone.

It is for you to justify the basis on which you: Demonize the Jewish state of Israel and its Jewish population; mock a world known American Jewish journalist and commentator; calling for the Jewish population of Israel to emigrate; and for course, calling people to boycott the Jewish state of Israel.

Other than subscribing to Neo-Socialism, can you, without slogan, find the rationale and words to express it in order to justify your claims against us, the Jewish people?

report this comment ikotubo
28 August 2007

TO NADAV KATZ: I welcome the opportunity for a rational debate on this issue, and I'm glad that there's someone out there who apparently still believes in the UN as the final moral and legal arbiter in these matters. You have rightly quoted Security Council Resolution 242 and have invited me to respond:

First, Israel has not only refused to relinquish territories acquired by war, as required, but continues to build settlements in the West Bank as I write. Yes, Sharon did withdraw from Gaza, but this was certainly not in compliance with 242; it was because Gaza had proved too problematic to occupy, according his military advisers. In any event, Gaza remains the largest prison camp on earth today. So much for Israel's compliance with 242!

Secondly, far from committing itself to Article 2 of the UN Charter as required under 242 (i.e., inter alia: by fulfilling its obligations in good faith; settling disputes by peaceful means bearing in mind the need for peace, international security and justice, refraining from the threat or use of force, except in genuine self-defence or as may be authorized by Security Council), Israel has adopted a belligerent attitude in the region, recently invading and attacking a nearby country and committing war crimes there, e.g, by using cluster bombs in residential areas. Its excuse? Two of its soldiers had been kidnapped by forces who are sworn enemies of the government there! At any rate, as we now know, that war was planned long before the soldiers were seized. That's another example of compliance with 242!

In contrast (and you'll notice from my previous post that I'm no great fan of the Arab/Islamic world either), the Arab world has, at least on two occasions so far, proposed a comprehensive peace settlement, at the heart of which would be a formal recognition of Israel's right to exist. The response? More assassinations in the West Bank and Gaza, even as I write! More war crimes. More petty daily cruelties. More humiliation.

Why should the world not feel enraged by these?

report this comment Nadav Katz
28 August 2007

Ikotubo,

No, don't misunderstand my feelings about the UN. The UN has done only one good thing for my people and that was back on 29 Nov 1947 and nothing else since. Resolution 242 is a starting point because it has been agreed upon by ALL sides and not because it is a UN resolution.

1) "First, Israel has not only refused to relinquish territories acquired by war, as required, but continues to build settlements in the West Bank as I write". – Well, Israel has indeed retreated from territories acquired during the Six Day War, 1967! It has done so from the entire Sinai Peninsula, a territory that is three times the size of the Jewish state of Israel. In so doing, Israel has demonstrated that it is willing to retreat from territory and some would even argue that it has fulfilled its obligation since the resolution calls for "the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories", and not from THE territories! But the most important point here as far as I am concerned is that Israel withdrew from territories based on an agreement that ensures its security, which is an organic part of this resolution.

2) Israel's "recently invading and attacking a nearby country and committing war crimes there, e.g, by using cluster bombs in residential areas". – With all due respect, I am willing to debate with you the Second Lebanon War, 2006, but this has nothing to do with resolution 242 of 1967! Instead, this has to do with a war that was initiated on July 2006 by Iran's front troops based in Lebanon, Hizballah, by having invaded Israeli sovereignty and killing and abducting Israeli soldiers based on sovereign Israeli territory and protecting Israeli civilians residing along that border.

3) All sides have proposed "peace settlements" during the past 40 years! Israel was ready to retreat immediately upon winning the Six Day War, only to have been told by the Arab League of States: No, to recognition of Israel; No, to negotiation with Israel; and , No to peace with Israel. This position has been maintained by the entire Arab world for decades since with the exception of Egypt and Jordan who were sides in that war and have eventually signed peace agreements with the Jewish state of Israel. Israel also entered into a peace process with the PLO representing the local Arabs, only to have found out in 1996 and again in 2000 that when the PLO does not like the way the negotiations go, their response is violence. And this is against the very charter of the UN and the Oslo Accords whereby all disagreements were to be resolved through negotiations and even arbitration if need be.

And on this baseless argument you propose to demonize the Jewish state of Israel and to boycott its populations – academics, civil workers, women and men of all walks of life??

report this comment ikotubo
28 August 2007

TO NADAV KATZ: At least let's get one thing right: I have not called for a boycott of Israel, even though I understand why many feel this is the way forward.

Secondly, I'm sorry that you don't believe the UN has done very much for Israel. Well, to begin with, the UN has no existence beyond the sum of its members. And, with some of its members having proved their determination to undermine it (e.g., by assassinating its peace envoy to the region in 1948 - Count Folke Bernadotte, a man who personally negotiated the release of 15,000 Jews from Hitler's gulags - by a man who was later elected as Israel's Prime Minister), it is a miracle that the UN still exists at all - let alone being in a position to do much for your country. Imagine if the 190+ countries that now make up the international community were to behave in that manner!

Thirdly, please don't keep mentioning Israel's withdrawal from places like Sinai as examples of its compliance with 242. As you must know, such territories have no strategic importance to it - certainly not with a peace accord in place, negotiated, by the way, by that great anti-Semite called Jimmy Carter. Those that do (e.g. the Golan Heights) are still under occupation.

The Lebanon war: I'm astonished that you do not see the connection between 242 and the 2006 war, especially given that it was you who rightly quoted 242, which itself refers to Article 2 of the UN Charter which explicitly prohibits such conduct. Enough said on that.

As for the PLO, well, you've merely repeated the lies (and I'm sorry to have to use such a strong word, but have no choice) about its supposed rejection of peace with Israel. Let me ask you: If you were Mr Arafat, would you have accepted the deal brokered by Clinton? Be as honest as you can be about this, please. Moreover, it simply isn't true that it was the Palestinians who resorted to violence after the collapse of those talks; it was the deliberately provocative visit by Ariel Sharon to the "holy sites," knowing the implications at such a tense period, that sparked off the 2nd intifada.

Regarding the position adopted by the wider Arab world towards Israel, yes, I agree that this was indeed the case. However, what is Israel's answer to their obvious change of heart?

Finally, it does your cause no good to use words like "demonize" to describe any attempt to criticize Israel's conduct. It's like the old "anti-semitism" slur, which has now lost its value, as pointed out by Mr Pilger.

report this comment Nadav Katz
28 August 2007

Ikotubo,

This is not a discussion about the UN hence I'll stop writing about this organization. What I shall continue to mention, however, is the boycotting of the :Jewish state of Israel promoted by the author of this article, because this IS the relevant subject for this thread.

The issue of Arab Israeli accommodation of peaceful co-existence based on resolution 242 has nothing to do with strategy. It rather has to do first and foremost with the parties' willingness to accept each other's right to exist in peace and security. The war, 1967, broke out because that had not been the case prior to it during which time the Arab world was still hoping to annihilate the newly established Jewish state of Israel, and only this resolution which is the basis for a peaceful accommodation, has enable the parties to agree on a common purpose and ground.

Israel's REACTION within the context of the Lebanon war of 2006 has nothing to do with resolution 242 of 1967! Israel's reaction was a defensive one, attempting to repel forces that had attacked it several times for the past six years, 2000 to 2006, and this defensive war was the latest such attack to which Israel reacted defesively, and defensive wars, Sir/Madam, are still accepted by the UN, unless here too some would say, all can defend themselves but the Jewish state of Israel.

The PLO rejected Israel's offer for a peaceful coexistence between it and a Palestinian Arab state in October 2000. You may argue that they should have rejected the offer put on the table at Camp David by both our former prime minister, Mr. Ehud Barak and the former US Presient, Mr. Bill Clinton. But in additon to rejecting the peace offer, the leadership of the Arabs of Eretz Israel/Palestine chose to respond with a war of terror which has lasted since was an act against both the UN charter and the very essence of the agreements on which they themselves signed, the Oslo Accords!

Sir/Madam, when hearing the rhetoric and reading the texts of those who have set out to single out a liberal democratic country of only six million people, situated on a territory the size of Macedonia in Europe or New Jersey in the US, and disproportionately to its size and importance obsess with being critical of everything about it, everything, and doing so based on non-factual information I consider this demonization of both a country and its people. And therefore I must ask the question: Why this country?

The only unique thing about this country, Israel, is the fact that it is the only Jewish country on earth; indeed, it is the national home of the Jewish people, it is this people's, this race's nation-state. One must, therefore, concludes, that it is an anti-Jewish racism that drives this obsessive attitude toward the Jewish state of Israel.

Sadly, the article by Mr. John Pilger is yet additonal link in this chain of demonization, more often than not found among Neo-Socialists, primarily based in Britain.

report this comment ikotubo
28 August 2007

TO NADAV KATZ: It was you who cited Resolution 242, not me. You also invited me to respond to it, which I did. And now, both this Resolution and the institution under which it was adopted have suddenly become irrelevant to the discussion? I suspect you've lost the argument, my dear friend. So, I rest my case.

report this comment Cybertiger
28 August 2007

"Finally, it does your cause no good to use words like "demonize" to describe any