Bright's Blog

168 comments from readers

redharry
15 May 2008 at 12:30

1. Why didn't you ask any of the 'lefty', 'anti-apartheid' kibbutzniks why they don't allow Arabs to become members? Don't you know there has never been an Arab member of a kibbutz, no matter how left wing?

2. Where do you even mention any of the far greater mayhem and suffering inflicted on the people of Gaza. Are you aware that Ashkelon was ethnically cleansed of its Arab inhabitants, most of wwhom were forced into exile in Gaza?

3. Supporters of an academic boycott of Israel will be interested in this quote from Regev, "The governor of the Bank of Iran needs to understand that because of the nuclear programme, his daughter can't study at Cambridge."

4. Israel feels 'besieged' by neighbours. Do you mean Egypt whose territory it has invaded twice and occupied., but has been at peace now for over thirty years? Jordan dittto. Lebanon whom it has bombed invaded and occupied on several occasions - killing kidnapping, torturing and imprisoning its civilians. Syria, whose territory it occupies and water it steals from the Golan Heights.

5. If you have evidence that Ahmedinajad is developing nuclear weapons (of which Israel has hundreds - a fact you neglect to mention), please tell us, the IAEA, or even American Intelligence what it is.

6. I'm afraid this is complete Zionist propaganda with only a few token nods to the case for the Palestinians. No wonder when it was funded by the egregious BICOM.

To quote the Guardian on where the money for your trip came,

'Poju Zabludowicz (54)

Worth £2bn, his father, Shlomo, was an Auschwitz survivor who built up arms firm Soltam in Finland. He holds a Finnish passport but lives in modernist house on "Millionaires Row" - Bishops Avenue, Hampstead.

He backs Washington neocon Richard Perle's Center for Security Policy, and Israel lobby group BICOM. He owns 40% of downtown Las Vegas, including casinos. He gave £15,000 to Cameron and another £25,000 to the Conservative party.'

As for Lorna Fitzsimmons

http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2006/10/lorna-gets-on-her-...

and BICOM

http://www.williambowles.info/isrl-pal/2006/0606/israel_uk_l...

In your own words, 'This may be just so much Zionist PR'

mark gardner
15 May 2008 at 13:32

Redharry yawn - another so called lefty getting oh so excited about anything that dares to suggest Israelis are not all bloodthristy monsters, uniquely deserving of having their country destroyed and its citizens bombed until such time as that can be achieved. Sweet. When did you last get so excited about China? Burma? Sudan? Anywhere? - and you wonder in the name of morality why so many Jews and Israelis feel uniqely singled out?

You complain about Israel and BICOM's funder - fine, go live in Iran or Hamastan and see where your human rights are beter respected. Female? gay? outspoken? Enjoy.

redharry
15 May 2008 at 14:21

I wasn't the one who singled Israel out, it was Martin Bright - who singled it out for praise and was funded by BICOM. I also think you will find that it is the citizens of Gaza who have been singled out for bombing in far greater numbers than that of Israel. Finally you fail to engage with any of the points I have made in reply to a blatantly one-sided (he seems to have met one Palestinian but can't be bothered to tell us what he or she said) piece of reporting. I wonder if Martin Bright can do any better.

Carl Jones
15 May 2008 at 16:24

Martin; I must take issue with this left thing....the Labour party has its own elite Jewish lobby and while Brown`s plays the game, I think it pains him. Blair on the other hand is married to Cherie, for he would also become a Jew.

It doesn`t matter which political party, Britain or Amerika, to get your hands on a power lever, you must sing from the Zionist hym sheet.

Checkout this link.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/articles.asp?ID=8601

There aren`t many like Professor Boyle and even now, he`s not main stream.

Martin makes a good point. I don`t have a problem with Jews, or with Jews having a place to call home. But there is one thing I`m certain of, Israel will NOT celebrate its 120th birthday.

It wasn`t that long ago when puppet leaders and MSM hacks were strutting thier knowledge on "hard and soft power".....the NWO (dominated by elite Jews) has so far failed to find a single opportunity to use "soft power" in the Middle East and I can`t see this happening.

The US has armed the ME upto its eye-balls and the game is nearly set. It doesn`t matter which ME state you are talking about. All the elites in these states, including Iran and Syria are playing the NWO game.

Remember that NWO false flag attack on 9/11...of course you do. Remember Musharraf`s first speech after 9/11? He had true fear in his eyes that day and since then, he has performed how a NWO puppet should. Musharraf once said "we`ve arrested all the terrorists" and Washington bit back, "no you haven`t" and this goes hand in hand with Mi6`s British theater of sham terror, with Pakistani patsies paraded in court and convicted on dodge evidence.

Before 9/11, you could debate Israel and its local in relative isolation. Today, things are much more complex. We had MI6 using the best of BL`s men in Bosnia and after that, some were allowed to settle in the UK. So the SIS are Jekyll & Hyde, two peronalities feeding off each other, giving each other something to do.

I am very worried about ordinary Israelies. All elites abuse their own people and the Zionist dominated NWO is no exception, for they have perfected the high art of sacrifice...Pearl Harbour and 9/11 are a couple of examples, you could add Churchill`s veiled theat over Poland. Hitler had no other option, but to go ahead. Even Hitler was a NWO puppet.

Israel is a possible NWO sacrifice and by saying this, I hope that everyone, will understand this NWO construct and by doing so, will close this NWO option off.

In its present context, Israel is a cancer in the Middle East and I`m sick to death of US presidents playing out the peace farce during their final year....big pharma isn`t interested in a cure, just expensive treatment.

mark gardner
15 May 2008 at 17:26

redharry - I think carl jones post says more than either of us ever could, and, I hope, reminds us both of who the real enemies are out there! (note to moderator - please don't delete carl jones post, its far too informative for that!!)

Still, at least when Jones says "elite Jews" he's being more honest than those on the idiot left who would use "Zionists" instead, and think that it was morally and politcially correct to do so.

Worse - those same idiots would then deny the possibility of any link between their own mentality re Zionists and carl jones mentality re Elite Jews.

Worse still - when someone like myself would point out the possibility of linkage, we'd be accused of consciously and maliciously employing antisemitism in order to cover israel's tracks. (subtext - don't trust Zionists, they are all 5th Columnists)

And even worse - its only Jews (oops Zionists) who those same leftists would ever deride in such a manner. Could you imagine them saying such a thing about a Muslim in any circumstance? Could you imagine if anybody else dared suggest they were immune to racism - as the left assumes they are immune to antisemitism?

As for engaging with your arguments - why should I bother? I'm not defending any of these things and I'm not responsible for them and - unlike so many people it seems - I'm not obsessed with Israel.

I asked as to when you last got so excited about something that wasn't Israel related. I also asked you to go try your luck in Iran and Hamastan, since you seem so keen to embrace them both. (I certainly hope your not a lesbian, then you really would be making a poor career choice).

Finally - Carl Jones is, I repeat, the real enemy.

Carl Jones
15 May 2008 at 18:36

mark g, thankyou for elevating me to such a high status.LOLIs this really the hight of you ability....is this your best game?"I`m not responsible for them and - unlike so many peopleit seems - I`m not obsessed with Israel"........is this you way of saying "I`m not bovvered and even if the Amerikans (NWO) are bovvered with Israel, its none of your business, so get you snout out of dis NWO`s business"?You are possibly right in one context, I`m am a ememy of the NWO. I`m sick to death of them playing one person off another, one country off another and Muslims off Christians and fear off love.

redharry
15 May 2008 at 23:20

I ignore the Carl Jones of this world.

As for you, there is no such place as 'Hamastan' a word coined by the Jabotinskyite Netanyahu, so your use of the term betrays your own politics. The rest of your post is totally incoherent.

MarkBin
16 May 2008 at 05:04

Perhaps Valerie should read Adam Lebor's book about Jaffa and contemplate what right Israelis have got to occupy homes for which Arabs own the deeds. Israel is not about Jews vs Muslims; it's about occupation and oppression. Having just watched Bush's mendacious and inflammatory speech in the Knesset about the "freedom and democracy loving" people of Israel, it doesn't look like there's much hope for a solution. If I was forced to live behind a huge wall knowing that someone on the other side was occupying my parents' home I'd be lobbing rockets at them.

knave
16 May 2008 at 07:07

I have met many left wing Isrealis and isreal is not a racist state. It has acted in a cruel way to the palestinians out of fear. Edward Said quite rightly blamed the Holocaust for this climate of fear.

Also the Isreali hawks have alot of blame for the situation for

1. Allowing genocide in lebanon

2. Massive over reaction to any attack

3. Formation of Hamas to undermine the secular Fatah.

Saying that, If I was secular arab I would would rather live under a secular Isreali state.

Who i really despise is the supporters of Isreal.

The many right wing journos such as Bright and Cohen and the US christian rapture right. Who use Isreal to mask their own racist agenda.

dr davids
16 May 2008 at 07:47

Carl Jones appears to be stuck in the days of the 'blood libel' and 'Dreyfuss affair'. His statement that elite Jews run all political parties..hmm...pretty much the same argument used by Hitler. I guess this open and visceral hatred of jews is at least not masked in the usual anti-Zionist cloak. I don't know where his hatred of Jewish people comes from but as will all prejudices it immediately negates any validity to the comments. Stand in the street and make these comments and you will be (rightly) arrested for insightment to hatred

Carl Jones
16 May 2008 at 12:09

Dr davids, "I don`t know where his (Carl Jones) hatred of Jewish people comes from"......

......look here fellow comentators....this is the classic elite Jew smear tactic, note, I said "elite Jew"....he`d love to called me anti-semitic, but this term has lost its luster....its like "nice", it means nothing.

So, according to you and your cabal, I hate Jews? In that case Dr david, why am I warning about an attack on the Jewish state of Israel.....come on Dr David, please enlighten us with your sick spin on this.LOL

I believe that elite Jews and there neocon chums in New York and London could sanction a false flag attack against Israel and blame it on Muslims....

....just imagine someone dropping a tactical nuke onto a ship off the coast of Israel, and then claim the nuke was on the ship? Of course, such a sick action would enable elite Jews and their neocon chums in New York and London to carryout their agenda of world domination.....

....of course, Dr davids believest action to save ordinary Israelis from a NWO sacrifice, is a hatred of Jews....one can only laff at such a dimwitted position.

Of course, the above senario is just one of many possiblities. Ordinary Israeli`s don`t trust their own leaders and the certainly don`t trust the US. Many Israelis would like to join the EU and get away from Washington and there are many who would immigrate to the EU if they had the chance....no sane person would want to stay in Israel today....is this why Dame Shirley Porter fled Israel for the comfort of London`s Mayfair?

davka
16 May 2008 at 13:02

Thank you Martin Bright for a fair and balanced article. I think the left hates Israel because it is getting an utterly distorted picture. Half of the Jews in Israel come from Arab/Muslim lands where they predated Islam but you will never hear about their suffering and dispossession, the reasons why they fled to Israel in the first place - their 'nakba' if you will. It is almost that there is a conspiracy of media silence not to spoil the narrative that Israel is a foreign western interloper in the Middle East. Some well-known Israeli leftists are also impervious to this Middle Eastern Jewish narrative, showing a kind of Eurocentric contempt and I guess the European Left takes their cue from them..

Cybertiger
16 May 2008 at 13:19

@dr davids

"Stand in the street and make these comments and you will be (rightly) arrested for insightment to hatred"

The insufferable illiteracy of the 'Elite Jew' tends to incite my anger and contempt.

Martin Bright
16 May 2008 at 13:21

The New Statesman disassociates itself completely from the comments by Carl Jones. We are currently coming to a decision whether to take down the posts

Serosch
16 May 2008 at 13:40

Martin Bright - The New Statesman disassociates itself completely from the comments by Carl Jones. We are currently coming to a decision whether to take down the posts -

If certain Zionists including you can post anti-Muslim comments on NS, then why do you get so upset when individuals start posting anti-Israeli comments.

You can no longer have it all your own way.

redharry
16 May 2008 at 14:11

Carl Jones and Serosch are just trolls trying to sabotage any debate.

Carl Jones
16 May 2008 at 15:38

Martin Bright; "We are currently coming to a decision whether to take down the posts (by Carl Jones).

Martin and the NS, by your very words, this is not a case of racism, or what some would term "anti-semitism"....no, the decision you are going to make is purely political and couldn`t be called anything else but NWO censorship.

As we can see, considerable pressure has been brought to bare on the Newstatesman by elite Jews....the same elite Jews who couldn`t care less about ordinary Israeli`s.

Carl Jones
16 May 2008 at 15:41

Serosch; my comments aren`t anti Israeli.

JL
16 May 2008 at 16:38

It is such a tragedy that left wingers in the UK now seem incapable of engaging in rational debate about Israel, Palestine and other Middle Eastern issues. As somebody of Afrikaans origin it seems to me that the denigration of Israel is similar to the scapegoating of white South Africans, and in particularly Afrikaners, during the Apartheid era. Apartheid was obviously an evil system but the liberal media of Britain and the United States completely failed to address their own complicity in sustaining it. The crude racism of the Afrikaners was used as a means of deflecting attention away from the fact that the South African economy was 70 percent British owned after the Second World War. There is thus an argument to be made that Apartheid was a British phenomenon.

It seems to me that In the same way that the racism and ignorance of UK and US liberals found in the Afrikaners a convenient scapegoat for the ills of mankind, the liberal media of the West have identified Israel as an outlet for their need to deflect attention away from their own moral culpability. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the excessive and virulent criticisms of Israel found in The Guardian, Independent, British academe etc. are the result of a latent anti-Semitism fuelled by an appalling ignorance of the languages, customs and history of the Middle East.

Of course the Jewish state has committed atrocities in the West Bank and elsewhere but why is there no counter-balance with the atrocities carried out on an almost daily basis by Arab governments and societies? Do Guardianistas really believe that Iran, a state which publicly hangs gays and political dissenters is morally superior to Israel? Why is no attention paid to the rampant bigotry, imperialist designs and disrepect for basic human rights in countries such as Syria, Tunisia, and Saudia Arabia? Surely a nation of fundamentalist bigots as barbaric as Saudi should by now have become a target of the West's moral indignation?

I write all of this as a Gentile of the Hard Left in the hope that self-righteous Soft Left Liberals will come to their senses and cease this pointless villification of Israel. After all, Europe, with its six million murdered Jews makes a strange kind of superior moral force.

Carl Jones
16 May 2008 at 16:43

The last NS editor alledgedly left after funding issues. However, I watched him on BBC`s Question Time where he made a good critique on the all powerful Jewish lobby. Maybe Mr Robinson was leaned on.

Well its 16.42....can`t be long before the NS decision.:0

JL
16 May 2008 at 16:47

Carl Jones's post and 'New World Order' ravings are worthy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and should be removed immediately.

There is no evidence whatsoever of a Jewish world conspiracy and any attempt to justify such an accusation would be an absurd libel representing a dramatic failure of reason. The Jews have been for millenia a driving force in Western culture, as vital to us as that of Socrates and Aristotle. Christianity is essentially no more than a Jewish sect.

Martin Bright
16 May 2008 at 16:50

On reflection the posts rather confirm what I said in my original article:

"The internet has flushed out a whole subculture of left-wing hostility to Israel that should make even Marqusee uncomfortable. This has a regular and willing outlet on the Guardian's Comment is Free website and the New Statesman also suffers from it whenever we publish articles on Israel. Postings on our blog casually link Zionism to fascism or South African apartheid. The language is so unpleasant that it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that many of the comments are driven by anti-Semitism."

So we have decided not to remove them (despite intense pressure from my Zionist controllers).

Cybertiger
16 May 2008 at 17:07

May I put in an urgent plea for mercy, a last minute reprieve for poor, maligned Jonesy. The death penalty never solves a problem and is simply not the answer - even if the NWO generally supports the policies of world-wide censorship and genocidal punishment. Be merciful; hold your fire, Mr Bright - please!

Cybertiger
16 May 2008 at 17:08

Whoops - too late!

jimdenham
16 May 2008 at 17:30

The "absolute anti-zionists" are out in force once again. These people judge Israel by standards they do not apply to any other state. They call into question Israel's very right to exist (the purpose of their ahistoric and politcally illiterate comparisons with Apartheid South Africa and -even Nazi Germany! -). My test for distinguishing between genuine pro-Palestinian campaigners motivated by a just and understandable revulsion against Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, and the "absolute anti-Zionists" who frequent both the fake-"left" and the far-right, is this: do you favour a two stae solution, with a viable Palestinian state existing alongside Israel's pre-1967 borders? If someone equivocates on that, then they're almost certainly an anti-semite.

Carl Jones
16 May 2008 at 17:35

JL; the world was cying out for sanctions on South Africa. But Mrs Thatcher said NO, it would only hurt the very people we are trying to help.

Just a few years later, George Bush and John Major forced Iraq sanctions through the UN....Russia and China sat on their hands. As a result of these NWO UN sanctions, over 1,000,000 Iraqi`s died....a war crime....ask Mr Pilger, he must have said as much in one of his NS articles.

Mrs Albright said she thought the deaths would be worth it. How can Western leaders hold such wide standards....are Iraqi`s valued less, are Palistinians worth less than Jews?

I am a centerist, and I make a serious attempt at respecting all people, no matter what their colour, race, or religion.

The NWO has had 60 years and more, to make the Middle East a happy place to live and it is clear, they have failed, by design.

Earlier, I said "Israel is a cancer in the Middle East", so what would say, if I said "Israel was surrounded by cancerous Arab states.....but you can`t justify this argument, because Israel is 60 years old and to be honest, its a FAILED state....it was a BIG mistake, just like the creation of Iraq.

I don`t claim to have any answers, but the abuse of Palistinians must stop. If Palistinians were mingling with Israeli`s, would Hamas rocket them...maybe for a while, but once pictures of dead Palistinians hit the MSM, it would stop....WHERE IS THE SOFT POWER?

I have made my comments in the hope they will contribute end inthe killing construct But as we can see from the replies, including the NS, they only want to hear one script and its called death, war and abuse.

And another thing.....my words are here in black and white. I`m sure you can get unlimited legal funding, so follow your nose and I`ll see you in court.LOL

Maybe we should have a stinking row about elite Scotts rampaging their way through Westminister. The argument is the same, it just wears different clothes.

Carl Jones
16 May 2008 at 18:11

Martin, it is clear that none of my comments are racist, anti-semitic, or in anyway break any UK law. I might add, that I find it shameful on your part and the Newstatesman, by making the veiled cliam that my comments are some how linked to anti-semtism and illustrates the weakness of your and the Newstatesman`s position.....the PATHETIC fact that YOU LOT had to sit down and make some sort of decision, shows a complete lack of morality.

BTW, my mum is down for the weekend and I`m sitting here tapping this out and talking to her about this, she just said "aren`t you worried they`ll bump you off"? I said, "it isn`t right to walk by on the other side". Maybe some of you should reflect on this over the weekend.

Cybertiger
16 May 2008 at 18:17

@JL

"Carl Jones's post and 'New World Order' ravings are worthy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and should be removed immediately."

I really think you spoil your case by overstating it.

PS. I'm pleased that Jonesy has had a stay of execution.

PPS. I have also survived a lengthy period at the NS, whereas the Zionist controllers at the BBC and Guardian CIF brought more than nine of my lives to an abrupt end. Mr. Bright and the NS are clearly very much controlled by the dark forces ... and the quality of mercy is clearly strained ... but ... perhaps I should say no more ... for now.

redharry
16 May 2008 at 18:57

The trolls have given Bright a convenient get-out clause which helps him avoid defending one of the most outrageous articles ever published by the NS. Bright's position is identical with that of the Israeli government and the neo-con arms dealer who funded his trip through BICOM. (By the way Martin, BICOM opposes the Palestinians right to return to their homes as guaranteed by international law and Security Council resolutions? Is that your position too?)

Reading his re-cycled PR puff, you would believe that the Israelis were the only victims in this conflict. The Palestinian refugees, prisoners, dead and wounded who outnumber the Israeli casualties many times over hardly get a mention. More people have been killed in a day in Gaza than in all the years of missile attacks on Sderot. It is as if Bright had visited South Africa and talked only to white people. What this is doing in a so-called left-wing magazine beggars belief.

writeon
16 May 2008 at 19:00

I wrote a comment about this article which has apperently vanished into thin air. Granted it was highly critical of the entire Israeli project, a land created at the expense of a people, the Palestinians, who weren't responsible for the holocaust, and yet have paid a terrible price for something they were not responsible for. How can this be fair or moral? Surely it's the Europeans or Germany that should 'pay' , not the Palestinians? But my comment has somehow vanished. I'm starting to wonder if I ever really wrote it!

I think it's a form of smear to tar the entire Left because a handful of 'leftist' ranters use agressive language when commenting on Israel. This is a propaganda technique, where one puts the opposition on the defensive by criticizing them instead of dealing with the substance of their criticism.

One of the main reasons for the Left's critical attitude to Israel is that the 'creation' of the Israeli state seems to fit the imperialist and colonialist model so well. Also Israel was created at a time when traditional Western imperialism and colonialism was in retreat on a global basis, yet in contrast to this movement, mostly European Jews were carving themselves a state out of a country that already existed and at the expense of the people, the Palestinians, who already lived there!

Clearly I rejecting out of hand any religious or supernatural justification for the invasion of Palestine by mostly European Jews. Maybe this is where the problem and controversy is to be found, that I think one can reasonably describe the creation of Israel as an invasion, and the fate of the Palestinians as, at the least, ethnic cleansing, some would define it as genocide; a deliberate attempt by the Jewish minority to systematically destroy and drive the native population of Palestine out using armed force and terrorism.

Why should we feel the need to celibrate the creation of an ethnic state, Israel the ligitimate home of the Jews, a uniquely Jewish state, but at the expense of another people, the Palestinians? Not only this, the state was formed in blood, destruction and terror, aimed directly at the Palestinians who were simply in the way of the Zionist dream. They were in the way and had to be got rid of by any means necessary.

These articles in the New Statesman on Israel are mostly awful and seem to almost totally ignore the rights, history and asperations of the Palestinian people, who have, at the very least, an equally legitimate claim to the areas now occupied by Israel.

What's also distrubing is that somehow we seem to be accepting an Israeli perspective on the entire Middle East. Israel was a state created by war and violence, not negotiation, surely no one can deny this fact? Yet, this violence and warfare has come to be defined as ligitimate, yet the occupied people, the people driven at gunpoint from their homes and country, are somehow illigitimate when they use violence in their attempt to resist occupation and regain their homes by warfare, why is this so? Why is the use of terror by Israel acceptable whilst when the Palestinians use the same methods, though on far smaller scale, defined as pure terror and totally illigitimate?

knave
16 May 2008 at 22:05

Write on you are spot on.

The trouble the Brights and Cohens of the world is that they will use the more extreme comments to further their right wing agenda and yet fail to answer posts like yours or answer questions such as

1. Why did Isreal help support the setting up of Hamas to undermine the secular Fatah

2. the economic genocide involved in the west bank

Martin Bright
16 May 2008 at 22:31

And "economic genoicide" is not an extreme comment?

Martin Bright
16 May 2008 at 22:34

Carl, please reassure your mum that no one is going to bump you off. But please try to temper your comments a little

Pariah v Parvenu
16 May 2008 at 22:42

I always thought that the hallmark of the left was grounding a discussion in historical reality. As write on's mythical rhetoric shows it is a lesson yet to be learnt.

It ignores the history of the Jews' illegal immigration to Israel; it ignores the Jews' anti-imperialist struggle, it ignores years of potential deals, it ignores years prior to 1948 ceasefires and broken ceasefires; it ignores the1948 war, it ignores the post-war context of mass movements of peoples; it ignores the politics of what was then known as the "Arab World". But, most disgracefully, it ignores the history of the Palestinians themselves. But, as with so many of his "fair and moral kind", such knowledge which, far from making matters easier, actually makes things as complex as they really are, is superfluous to the easy street of Manicheanism.

oskar
16 May 2008 at 23:07

Bright's article is a continuation of the ridiculous campaign by himself, Nick Cohen and others of the so-called Euston group to lead people of liberal persuasion to debate on the meaning of terms such as 'the left' rather than talk about the realities of oppression and land confiscation. In doing so the article typifies the strategies of the right-wing pro Zionist lobby to pervert at any cost the nature of the debate.

You may think that to share the same opinions as Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Tanya Reinhart, the Refuseniks and in my case Israeli friends, is to make us 'anti-semitic'. Accusation like this simply remove all meaning from the expression, and certainly do not lead to meaningful debate about the facts - but then I suppose that is the intention.

jimdenham
17 May 2008 at 01:16

Pariah v Parvenue: "it ignores the 1948 war": too right, you anti-Isreal fanatics. You always do ignore 1948.

Pariah v Parvenu
17 May 2008 at 01:27

Oskar,

You state,

"In doing so the article typifies the strategies of the right-wing pro Zionist lobby to pervert at any cost the nature of the debate."

and then state you want a

"meaningful debate about the facts"

I bet you don't even see the irony.

Amihai
17 May 2008 at 05:50

Beholding Israel today, Theodor Herzl - Zionism's fin-de-siecle prophet and founding organiser - would have alternatively beamed and frowned. Beamed because the Jewish state, with all its flaws, is a major success story among post-1945 states. It is a vibrant, liberal democracy, governed by the rule of law and attentive to the civil and human rights of its citizenry. Its Arab minority, for all its complaints, enjoys social benefits (Israel's Jews in effect finance, through child benefits, the demographic growth that threatens Jewish dominance), prosperity and freedoms - including the freedom to lambast the Jewish state and support its mortal enemies - that can only be dreamt of in Arab states.

He would have beamed because the Jewish state is enjoying an incomparable cultural efflorescence, with a host of writers and musicians the toast of Europe and America; because Israel's universities and scientific centres are up there with the best (no Arab university is rated among the world's top 500; all of Israel's are); because its economy, despite the complete absence of natural resources (which some might see as a telling proof of God's non-existence), is surging on the crest of a hi-tech wave and weaponry sales for which the sky appears the limit.

And, yes, Herzl would have beamed at Israel's military victories in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982, seeing them as proof positive of his expectation that Zionism, once the Jews were re-established in their ancient homeland and sovereign over their destiny, would mould a new assertive, muscular Jew, unlike his weakling forebears of the diaspora.

But Herzl would also have frowned - for example, at Hebrew's sway over modern Israel. He had never been persuaded that his fellow Zionists would manage to revivify an ancient tongue and turn it into a living language of a thriving culture and state (the Irish, for example, failed). Herzl knew no Hebrew (or Yiddish). Indeed - a bitter irony - he had envisioned the Jewish state running on German, the language of the cultural elite of central Europe from which he sprang. Still, the babble of tongues one encounters on Israel's streets - the mix of Hebrew, Russian (20% of Israel's Jews are Russian born), Amharic (the language of Ethiopian migrants), French, English, Yiddish (the daily language of most of the Jewish ultra orthodox), Arabic (the daily language of 20% of the country's population) - would probably have brought to his mind the multicultural Budapest and Vienna of his youth.

Herzl would have been aggrieved at - though probably not surprised by - the ostentatiousness of Israel's nouveaux riches (and virtually all its rich, and there are a surprising number, are nouveaux), and appalled by the roughness, verging on vulgarity, of Israel's streets - where reprehensible, downright dangerous driving and a certain macho callousness is the norm, and where knife fights occur almost nightly outside teenagers' discos. Perhaps the deeply secular, anti-theocratic Herzl would have been most flummoxed and incensed by the (burgeoning) numbers, and correlated political power of the orthodox and ultra-orthodox (some 20-25% of the country's Jews). He believed that God was dead, and religious Jews a dying breed.

Herzl's liberal sensibilities would have been shocked by the Israeli occupation of much of the West Bank and the displays of insensitivity and occasional brutality that are the common fare of most military occupations. More generally, he would certainly have been taken aback by the spectacle of Arab-Israeli conflict, of which the occupation is one of the byproducts. A child of the European imperial age, Herzl would have been astonished at the spectacle of Arab nationalism (indeed, of any third world nationalism), though not by the barbarism of Israel's terrorist foes - after all, he always conceived of the Jewish state as an outpost of western values and modernity in an area characterised by savagery (Israel's former prime minister and current Labour party leader, Ehud Barak, once described Israel as a "villa in the jungle"). In Herzl's utopian novel, Altneuland, published in 1902 and depicting Israel/Palestine in 1923, the country's Arabs express their thanks to the Jewish colonisers for bringing them prosperity and enlightenment.

I am not sure what Herzl would have thought of Israel's settlement enterprise in the West Bank (and Golan Heights). But he certainly would have been depressed by the implacable enmity of the Arab world - several formal peace treaties notwithstanding - towards the Jewish state, and the serial rejections by the Palestinian Arabs of two-state proposals for a solution (in 1937, 1947 and, most recently, 2000).

Indeed, he probably would have sympathised with the shattered Israeli left and centre, which has persistently advocated a compromise based on two states, only to see in July and December 2000 the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, reject the terms offered by Barak and President Clinton - terms that will never be bettered (from the Palestinian viewpoint), and will probably never be matched by future Israeli and American leaders. Herzl, like many Israelis today, would most likely look towards Israel's future - especially in view of the looming cloud of Iranian nuclear weaponry - with a great deal of existential angst. (Benny Morris).

Benny Morris's new book, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War

Cybertiger
17 May 2008 at 08:53

@Mr. Bright

"Carl, please reassure your mum that no one is going to bump you off. But please try to temper your comments a little"

But ethnic cleansing and genocide, economic or otherwise, are not matters to be tempered with - as I'm sure Jonesy - and his Mum - would agree.

Amihai
17 May 2008 at 09:57

"Ethnic cleansing", Cybertiger, is what you, yes you, have proposed with regard to the Jewish community of Israel, nearly six million of us! How dare you talk about this concept??!!

writeon
17 May 2008 at 11:34

But what of the future of Israel? Clearly Israel is a reality on the ground, and it, and the Jewish population of Israel are not going anywhere. They are there to stay. But what of the character of the state they have carved out of Palestine? It's almost as if Israel has become a modern version of Sparta. A state created by the military, a state that owes its very existance to military prowess, a militarized state.

Of course one can argue that Israel is the only democracy in the entire Middle East, a vibrant economy, culturally significant; yet the problem of the Palestinians refuses to go away. What about the refugees and their decendents, people who have the right, in international law, to return to their homes, villages, farms, towns and cities? Exactly how democratic is a state that has driven more than half of its original population out and refuses to let them return? The Jewish majority, which excercises its democratic rights inside the borders of Israel, has deliberately excluded the other, alternative, majority, the Palestinians, from the democratic process, 'rigging' the system, so to speak, in favour of Israel's Jewish majority.

So, superficially, Israel appears to be a beacon of democracy in the region, yet this is only possible if one narrowly focuses on the rights of Israeli Jews and chooses to exclude the rights of the Palestinian majority who live in a kind of limbo, in no man's land.

One has created a powerful, successful, state for the Jews, but at the same time, another people, the original majority, the Palestinians, have become 'stateless' and have paid a tremendous price for Israel's 'success'.

When Israel celebrates the success of the state they have created, it seems churlish not to confront the realitiy of the Palestinian question, to ignore the Palestinians completely, as the New Statesman has done in the current issue, is disgraceful.

Somehow the perfectly ligitimate, democratic rights, of the Palestinians have to be addressed justly. The problem is of course that if one accords them equal rights and accepts that they also have a ligitimate claim to the same territory that Israel now controls, then one inevitably calls into question the very nature of Israel as a Jewish state. Democracy for Jews would appear to preclude democracy for millions of Palestinians, because Israel can only exist in its present form by excluding the Palestinian majority from the democratic process, and how 'democratic' is that?

This is of course highly theoretical and esoteric, because Israel will never allow the Palestinians equal rights within Israel's current, disputed, borders. To do so would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. But can Israel really subjugate the Palestinians for ever? Is this policy sustainable in the long term? What happens to a people or state that bases its own well-being and very existance on the subjugation of another people? Is this a healthy foundation opon which to build a state or a culture? Where one ethnic group totally dominates another and is so much richer and more powerful? Historically, states built on such a foundation of fundamental injustice, have proven to be of temporary duration. Is Israel, which apparently seems so 'successful' actually creating the conditions for its own decline or even destruction over the long term, and with all the terrible consequences to follow?

Cybertiger
17 May 2008 at 11:43

@Mr. Amihai Katz

""Ethnic cleansing", Cybertiger, is what you, yes you, have proposed with regard to the Jewish community of Israel, nearly six million of us! How dare you talk about this concept??!!"

Ethnic cleansing??!?!

The Jews will grow roses in Texas.

Israel is not safe and there is now an opportunity not to be missed (remember Abba Eban). There is a killing to be made. I merely suggest that the Zionist Jew grasps a business opportunity, voluntarily wanders under the Lone Star and grows lots of yellow roses in the desert wastes of Texas.

PS. Sadly, very sadly ... Texas is a moral desert. But I am optimistic that the Jews will make the desert bloom.

Amihai
17 May 2008 at 11:59

Cybertiger, you have called and continue to call, elegantly but very meliciuosly, for the "cleansing" of Israel of its Jewish population, nearly six million of us.

No way can you now attempt now to escape this advocacy by mocking the person who has pointed this racist approach of yours.

How shameful, how shameful!

I just hope that yours is not the face of the entire left in the UK.

Amihai
17 May 2008 at 12:48

Yes, once again, I do hope the rest of the British left is not as racist as this anti-Jewish racist calling for the cleansing of the Jewish homeland of Jews.....!

bellouse
17 May 2008 at 13:21

Why are the left anti-Israel? Because we share the guilt of the Holocaust we expected Israel to occupy the moral high ground and the Zionists appear to have descended to the lower depths. It seems morality cannot coexist with the need to survive on their terms. I believe this to be true and am ashamed of it. Their righteousness is difficult to accept. This is why I am anti-Israel. Shalom.

Carl Jones
17 May 2008 at 14:00

writeon,"Vibrant economy"....yes, but what would happen without US charity and at cost arms?

Nabil
17 May 2008 at 15:38

Proposterous article.

First there is the assumption right from the beginning (in the article's title) that your political alliances dictate all of what you are, what you are capable of thinking, what convictions you have and what emotions you are restricted to feel. People who oppose Israeli policies do it not simply because they are of the left. There is no left 'doctrine' which a leftie must adhere to, in ordr to prove their 'leftness'. The issue is a humanitarian one. If people ignore this, they serve no purpose other than being mouthpieces of the conflicting parties.

This way of thinking reveals nothing new to me except that the author himself thinks in this narrow and limited way.

Secondly, there is no mention of the suffering on the Palestinian's part. A typical Palesitnian family living in Gaza will not have fuel to transport their children to schools, will not have enough food to give them or even enough money to buy food as prices sore, not even enough electricity to prepare a cooked meal or drink a cup of tea while the Israeli masterminds behind this atrocity drink coffea and eat biscuits as they plan to unleash yet more suffering onto the population of Gaza, they dont even allow aid to get into Gaza where more than 80% of the population is dependent on aid. All this in addition to the continuous military onslaught and massacres Israel commits against an impoverished population.

Is this not worth mentioning?

Amihai
17 May 2008 at 15:58

Nabil and like minded people, shouldn't the Arabs, Palestinian and otherwise, shoulder any responsibility, both historical and present, regarding the lack of peaceful co-existence between Arab and Jew, between the Arab world and Israel?

Can we ever hear or read a bit of introspection, self examination about the contribution of the Arab world to the misery of the Arabs of Eretz Israel/Palestine?

I look forward to reading some such observation from you!

Nabil
17 May 2008 at 15:59

Martin Bright.

If it is indeed you who wrote this...

"On reflection the posts rather confirm what I said in my original article:

"The internet has flushed out a whole subculture of left-wing hostility to Israel that should make even Marqusee uncomfortable. This has a regular and willing outlet on the Guardian's Comment is Free website and the New Statesman also suffers from it whenever we publish articles on Israel. Postings on our blog casually link Zionism to fascism or South African apartheid. The language is so unpleasant that it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that many of the comments are driven by anti-Semitism."

So we have decided not to remove them (despite intense pressure from my Zionist controllers)."

....you have confirmed to me that you are a lunatic.

Unless you have a severe limited capacity for understanding things, it should be clear from what is written on this page that the target of people'e discussion is not Jews; it is Israel and the -yes- racist policies it pursues. What is a person to write if every ciriticism levelled at Israel is discredited for being antisemitic in origin?

I thought Israelis lived in a democracy, or is censorship one of Israel's laws? What is the altenative to criticism of Israel? Supporting Israel in its massacres of Palestinians? Is it only possible for a person to clear themselves of antisemitic accusations by supporting the racist humuliating practices Israel carries out against the Palestinians?

Nabil
17 May 2008 at 16:04

Im glad the Newstatesman put three other more sobre-minded, rational and informative articles before your Martin Bright. Avi Shlaim's article should do a little to explain things in response to your post Amihai.

Amihai
17 May 2008 at 19:20

Well, Nabil, any introspection? Any at all?

Amihai

Jerusalem, Israel

writeon
17 May 2008 at 19:30

I think Israel has only one realistic future course in the Middle East, to become just another of the regions myriad of ethnic groups, not the master, not the slave, but just another group.

Israel cannot over the longterm remain a 'foreign' and hostile entity in an overwhelmingly Arab and Muslim society. Israel must become integrated into the Middle East, this won't be easy or painless, but the alternative in constant and eternal conflict, war, and perhaps total destruction.

Granted Israel is at the moment incredibly powerful in relation to the crushed Palestinians and the cowed Arab regimes, but will this situation exist for ever? What seems to be happening is that the character of the Israeli state is creating the circumstances for Israel's eventual demise. What do the vast majority of Arabs see when they look at Israel? They see a state that uses force to get what it wants, not meanigful negotiations or compromise, but force. How does one 'negotiate' with Israel then? One does it by force of arms, not justice or anything else, but only force.

Given that Israel will always be a small country with a tiny population inside a huge Arab and Muslim region, it's reckless to assume that one will always be militarily superior to the combined forces of the Arabs.

Take the historical parallel of the crusader kingdom carved out of the region by superior force of arms almost a thousand years ago. For a while they pervailed against the Arabs. They had hightech weaponry, were better organized, built impregnable castles and created their own state. Yet their presence eventually led to the emergence of a leader who united the Arabs into an army capable of fighting the crusaders, even though this took more than a century.

Israel risks, by its own actions and policies and national myth, creating the conditions for its own destruction. Already we can see that the Arabs are learning from the Zionists. They are forming their own ideological and religious and pure militias, who are capable of taking on the Israeli army and holding their own. This is something new and should be taken seriously.

The moral, motivation and militancy, of the Hamas and Hezbolah fighters is equal to the Zionists who fought to create Israel against a weak and disunited Arab opposition. All over the region people can see that the 'righteous militias' have succeeded in resisting Israel and reviving Arab pride. That there is an alternative strategy, that it's possible to defy and resist both Israel and the United States. This development also undermines the various regimes created and supported by West in the region and makes them appear both impotent, corrupt and irrelevant.

The West and Israel risks creating the circumstances that will lead to the destruction of all of their client states in the longrun, to be replaced by militant regimes totally unwilling to compromise with the Israeli 'crusader' state.

The problem for Israel and the West is that more war, attempting to destroy the 'righteous ones' is probably doomed to fail, and will only strenghthen them over time.

The ultra-nationalist right in Israel believes it can dominate and subjugate the Arabs for ever, split them and beat them down, and anyway we've always got our vast nuclear arsenal if things really become problematic. But is this really the way forward for Israel? Isn't the ultra-nationalist right's dream or fantasy of Israel as the dominant power in the Middle East a crazed dream that will probably turn into a nightmare for everyone concerned?

levi9909
17 May 2008 at 21:31

I suppose it was honest of Martin Bright to notify his readers that he was sponsored by the zionist propagandists of BICOM but he really needn't have bothered. Gushing about the quality of the breakfast at a Jews only kibbutz was an early giveaway as to the side the writer was taking here.

Invoking the holocaust to justify a project whose ethnic cleansing intentions were first mooted 50 years before the holocaust was another cheap shot to set the tone for the rest of yet another batch of zionist apologetics.

And the pronouncements and "intentions" of Ahmadinejad. Where did they come from? We know that whether or not he was mistranslated over the "wiping Israel from the map" statement he has since said that Iran has no intention of initiating hostilities with Israel and he said that he would like Israel to disappear like the Soviet Union disappeared. Is that so terrible? Iran hasn't invaded or attacked any neighbours, Israel has and many times.

The ceasefire offers of Hamas should surely warrant a mention in an article aiming to get at the truth of the current state of Gaza as should a mention of Sharon's notorious remark regarding the Gaza disengagement (not withdrawal as BICOM, sorry Bright would have us believe) that it was a "punishment and not a reward for the Palestinians".

And let's not forget that the State of the Holocaust Survivor boasted that it was "putting the Palestinians on a diet" for *voting* for Hamas, not because of any rockets fired at the occupier's base territory.

The fact is that zionism from its inception was a colonial settler enterprise, the companies it used to buy land from absentee landlords were openly (in pre-BICOM days) called Jewish Colonisation Societies (the main one of which, the Jewish National Fund, has those great leftists, Brown, Blair and Cameron as honorary patrons) and its funds were organised and distributed by the Jewish Colonial Bank.

Oh, and who are these left-wing antisemites on the internet? Where are the examples of this antisemitism? No names, no examples given, just a repeat of a BICOM line, the Guardian promotes leftist antisemitism. Yes, there is antisemitism on the internet, but where from? Without links, names and examples, we have the word of the writer

If Israel was supported by the left in its early days, that was possibly because of Stalin's opportunism or a Eurocentrism that placed the suffering of Jews above the suffering a Jewish colonial project was bound to cause to the natives and neighbours of Palestine, especially when one considers the promises made by early zionist leaders that the Jewish State would act as a "sentinel" for western interests or the more overtly racist "watchdog" over the "barbarians of Asia".

But I think the most chilling part of this article is the idea that the Palestinians have some kind of standing army being trained and well armed in a way that is a credible threat to Israel's existence. This kind of, at best, idle speculation, is aimed at justifying the mammoth onslaught that Israel is believed to be poised to embark on if a distraction occurs elsewhere in the world. The Olympics could do for an Israeli campaign of slaughter in Gaza in the summer what the Falklands War did for Menachem Begin back in 1982 when Israel embarked on a genocidal campaign in Lebanon.

Hopefully, as with Lebanon, Israel will lose eventually but no matter what happens it is articles like the one above, in every outlet of the English language media that play their role in making Israel think that no matter what it does it can pass itself off as the victim defending itself. The pen may not be mightier than the sword but without zionist pens in the media, Israel's sword might not do as much smiting as it does.

There are still economically and strategically sound reasons for imperialists (corporate and state) to support Israel but what began as a colonial settler state, is now starting to look like a hi-tech cult of anti-Arab violence, with no regard for the lives of it's Jewish population and with cheerleaders and propagandists throughout the west of which Martin Bright is just another one.

The question of Palestine is indeed a faultline in politics but it shouldn't be one *within* the left. It should be between those who believe in justice, democracy and racial equality and those who do not. There are genuine leftists and liberals (in one word, humanists) who accept Israel's existence as a fact but if you positively believe that a state based on colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing, racist laws and relentless aggression is in any way legitimate then you are not with the humanist tradition. Zionism is for Jewish exclusivity, indeed supremacy. It is a rejection of enlightenment values and it always has been.

Carl Jones
17 May 2008 at 21:37

writeon....you are getting back on track after a wobble. what you suggest might have been possibe. Being really honest in what I believe, it has now gone too far and without taking sides, it is very clear the Israeli elite and their chums in London and New York are intent on their present course....a course which has nothing to do with morality.....they are lost in their little dream where they will one day wake in a sweaty nightmare.

This is not what I would like. But as Mr Bright inclinates, I must temper my comments.....but who is Bright asking me to temper them for???

Mr Bright might mock, but its a certainty, that NS phones were rather hot on Friday....and mocking is all they could do.

Harvey
17 May 2008 at 21:39

To Write On

You state that Israel is a foreign and hostile state .

Foreign yes -as foreign as any other nation state is to another.As for hostile ,allow me to remind you that Israel has not threatened another state with annihilation as has the tryanny that is Iran. Do not confuse the right to self defence against unprovoked attack as hostility.

You state that Israel should become intergrated into the Middle East . By that I assume you mean it should cease to be a Jewish state and become part of the Caliphate with perhaps a few Jews remaining as Dhimmi.

Hold on whilst I do a quick poll of my Israeli friends to see how they like the idea.

Yes you are right Israel is a powerful military state .It needs to be in order to protect its citizens and as any soverign nation has the right to so do.

You talk of morals and motivation of groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah

The recent power struggle between Hamas and Fatah witnessed individuals pushed from high rise buildings .Is this the morality of which you speak.

The simple unpalatable truth is that Israel remains an island of democracy. deceny ,modernity and morality in what is in fact a cess pool of totalitarian failed despotic states whose rulers use Israel as a scapegoat to protect their autocracies and theocracies.

We observe the murder mayhem ,hatred sectarian violence which appears to be a normality in Arab society and we are repulsed by it .

This is before we touch on Islamism and its fundamentalist adherents which is a threat to all mankind through it acts of barbarism and hate.

You may wish for Israels demise but I believe that long before that happens the oil will finally run out and states such as Saudi Arabia will collapse back into the desert sands .When this happens I dread to think of what will happen to those Muslim states who rely on hand outs to support their failed regimes .The turmoil which will take place throughout the Muslim world will either kill or cure it!

Cybertiger
18 May 2008 at 07:52

@Harvey

"The simple unpalatable truth is that Israel remains an island of democracy. deceny ,modernity and morality in what is in fact a cess pool of totalitarian failed despotic states ... "

Israelis have the power to kill Palestinian children in the defence of state. And its a simple unpalatable truth that the people enthusiastically use that power to defend themselves.

http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2000.html

The sad reality is that the Israeli people swim freely in a cess pool of effluent produced by their own failed democratic state.

writeon
18 May 2008 at 09:38

Harvey,

You assume way too much. I'm proud of my little bit Jewish culture. About a hundred years ago two members of my extended family, who lived in Vienna came virtually to blows at a ball over the question of Israel and Zionism, or so I've been told. One had become a passionate Zionist and was preparing to buy land in Palestine. The other, his brother, was an anarchist and despised the entire concept of the nation state and the growth of nationalism he saw all around him in Europe. He believed that ultra-nationalism was very dangerous, and given what happened in Europe shortly afterwards, I think he was correct. I think the idea of ethnically exclusive states is very problematic for a number of reasons.

On the other hand, his brother who moved to Palestine with his family didn't end their lives in a concentration camp. So which brother was 'right'? Maybe they both were? Maybe they were both 'wrong'?

I have not written that I 'wish for Israel's demise' anywhere. You assume too much. I am capable of writing that I wish to see destroyed, if that is what I meant. Only I don't. I was asking a series of questions. Is the current ultra-nationalist course which Israel has embarked on sustainable? Is Israel's attitude and actions towards the Arabs sensible? Is Israel slowly but steadily creating the conditions for a tremendous backlash at some point in the future, which will force Israel to use its vast nuclear arsenal in order to survive? What are the consequences for Jewish culture of taking on the role of the 'master race' in relation to the Arabs? Something your very negative coments about the Arabs seems to illustrate quite clearly, or perhaps you are unaware of the almost rascist nature of you attitudes to Arabs?

f you are going to attack me, at least attack me for words I used, not what you think I wrote, or put words in my mouth. That is unworthy. It's also so easy for me to refute and makes your arguments seem weaker than the really are. You do have a point of view about Israel and I understand it. I don't agree with you, but I understand what you mean.

I believe it is perfectly possible for Israel to negotiate a 'just peace' with the Palestinians, but the longer the occupation continues the harder it will get. This is a paradox. That what many think of as increasing Israel's security, may, actually, over the longterm, lead to disaster for Israel.

When I wrote about Hamas and Hezbollah I was not say they were 'moral' as in 'good', I was only pointing out that they have a high moral, as in 'fighting spirit' and a willingness to fight for what they believe in. I wasn't calling them 'angels', they are ruthless fighters, not that different from the Zionists who created Israel on the battlefield.

And that is the whole point of my argument. Israel by its actions is creating an enemy that is just as dedicated to 'destroying' Israel, as the Zionist nationalists were to creating Israel. Also these militant arab militias, believe they have 'right' 'justice' and 'God' on their side, just as many Zionist believe. This makes them a very potent fighting force, like the Spartans. One is seeing the birth of 'ideological pure' and highly motivated fighters who are willing to fight and die for what they believe in, and take pride in defining a militarily superior enemy, for them sacrifice is an outward sign of there 'righteousness'.

These 'righteous warriors' and their 'political' version of 'pure' and 'uncorrupt' Islam are gaining ground, and the more Israel targets them as the true enemy the more popular they become, in stark contrast to the various regimes created and supported by the Western powers. These regimes have basically accepted and surrendered to Israel, they are collaborators in their own subjugation, vassal states.

However, the elites in most of these Arab states, virtual dictatorships, don't represent the will or attitudes of the general mass of their populations at all. Israel is very happy to be the only 'democracy' in the Middle East because if democracy was allowed in the rest of the region the corrupt ruling elites would all be swept from power in the twinkling of an eye! Israel isn't really interested in 'democracy' in the region at all, that is just rhetoric, the ultra-nationalist's in Israel are interested in power and control. They aren't interested in 'peace' only surrender on their terms, and not only that they want the Arabs to publically acknowledge their total defeat and subjugation to Israel, for example the demand that they accept Israel as a Jewish state, which seems close to being racist, doesn't it?, or the new demand that the Arabs drop the use of the term 'the catastrophe' Al-nakba to describe their perspective on the creation of Israel. Such demands are designed to humiliate the Arabs, and are as stupid as they are counterproductive, but the again Israel feels too strong to need to negotiate. It thinks it can dictate for ever, and it's this collosal arrogance, the arrogance of the 'master race' that will, if not checked in time, lead to Israel's decline.

Carl Jones
18 May 2008 at 11:19

I know this link is going to cause a storm. I have read quite a few articles by Michael James over the years. He continues to maintain that he lives in Germany...

....so why hasn`t he been arrested??

This is a good question and I think he might be right. That German prosecutors are scared silly by what he knows.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=8619

Did the allies murder 3 million German civilians after the war?

Why can elite Jews get away with directly threatening Europe with nukes?

As I`ve said in an earlier comment. Why did all the Second World War leaders fail to mention anything which could be interpreted as the Holocaust? Why did the Red Cross report also fail to mention any trace of what we understand today as the Holocaust?

It won`t be long before we British will also be gagged by European Holocaust denial laws.....

....what are they hiding, what scares them so much?

markg
18 May 2008 at 22:48

Redharry - On Carl Jones, you dismiss him as being irrelevant, but I think the problem with him is that he reveals a mania that I fear is not entirely unrelated to the one eyed hatred that you and other posters have toward Israel.

Look at Writeon for instance. His contribution is extremely erudite yet he still employs the filthy description of Israelis as "master race". He talks about 2 Jewish relatives - one an anarchist, one a Zionist. Guess which brother Writeon describes here:

"On the other hand, his brother who moved to Palestine with his family didn't end their lives in a concentration camp."

And thats it. Thats your option - die in a concentration camp or end up in the Master Race. Writeon brilliantly (if inadvertently) summarises the position of the anti-Israel left. Genius.

I get the feeling the Left prefers 6 million dead Holocaust Jews to the horrifying prospect of what would have happened if 6 million Jews had found refuge in mandate Palestine.

I can see the crocodile tears and hear the excuses if Ahmedinejad ever should nuke Israel. Sorry guys, these living Zionists don't want to be dead Jewish idealists; and the more embattled they feel, the less they will concede or risk. The global Left could have been a bridge between Israeli and Arab, instead you've backed Arab hatred and left Israel feeling bitterly justified in its fear and truculence.

The more one eyed your obsessive Israel hared reveals itself to be, the more defensive/aggressive the Zionist response will be. Catch 22 unless you show the capacity to hear both sides to this conflict.

This isn't about your criticising Israel, its about the passion of your hatred and your ignoring all other relevant factors regarding how difficult it has been for Israel to achieve a secure peace over the 60 years of its existence.

And then, you savage Martin Bright for having taken the Zionist shekel. All other aspects of his life and career are now as nought on the charge sheet. You wouldn't even consider to complain about journalists who are taken on trips paid for by Arab regimes & lobbyists. Why not? Here's a tip - email Carl Jones and ask him about the continuity between pre WW2 Jewish media control allegations and post WW2 Zionist media control allegations.

davidR
19 May 2008 at 00:18

Martin Bright would not have needed funding from Bicom to interview several Jews in Britain who have come to similar conclusions of rejecting israeli policies and the ideology behind them. In Britain today there are more Jews who are critical of israel and are questioning Zionism than at any time since Israel was created. Problem is I guess it doesn't fit very easily into the categories he has created of left wing antisemites and zionist victims of antisemitism.

The creation of Israel provided a solution for Jewish refugees from the Holocaust shamefully left lingering in DP camps, but that act of creation also inflicted a permanent injustice on the Palestinians. Zionism was a tragedy for the Palestinians but also a disaster for the Jews - who until then had largely identified with progressive movements for equality and social justice. They now find themselves as pawns of America's strategic interest, and in the case of Zionists - willing pawns.

Of course no one is immune form antisemitism which has deep roots in Western culture, and unfortunately some people on the left unconsciously draw from that in their critiques of israel but most people on the left, including Jewish leftists reject Zionism and condemn Israeli policies of discrimination and occupation because they believe in social justice. And that position for them goes hand in hand with fighting racism and oppression everywhere.

Oh, and take no notice of Carl Jones - you can be sure that those who spend their time denying the Holocaust are those who would dearly love to inflict the next one.

Pierre
19 May 2008 at 00:25

Why the left has an anti occupation stance, it's an intellectual thing primarily, further it's a decency,honesty,humanitarian , and anti Nazi rebirth issue.................................................................

Cybertiger
19 May 2008 at 07:53

Mark Regev, spokesman for Olmert, said that Britain, like the rest of Europe, needs to wake up to the reality of the threat: "The governor of the Bank of Iran needs to understand that because of the nuclear programme, his daughter can't study at Cambridge."

Mark Regev, the deluded dictator, has the exceptional arrogance of the weasel.

writeon
19 May 2008 at 09:18

MarkG

The reason I used the phrase 'master race' and put it in quotes was to indicate the profound danger that I believe is inherent in ultra-nationalism, in Israel too.

I am not saying that all Israelis are racists or what to be a 'mater race' in relation to the subjugated arabs under their rule. But I do think there are profound questions about the character of a state that where one ethnic group, the Jews, are so dominant in all ways, yet live cheek by jowl with a clearly subserviant ehtnic minority, the Palestinians.

I realize the phrase 'mater race' is very provocative, and the concept is 'filthy', yet clearly a large number of Israelis on the Right, do feel superior to the Arabs in every way, and feel they have a right to subjugate them, exile them and take their land by force.

It's interesting that the Right in Israel continually brings up the holocaust and in my opinion 'prostitutes' what happened for cynical political purposes. I think it's deeply tragic and perversly ironic, almost grotesque, that Israel and Jews of all peoples, have now come to rule over another people and have created 'ghettos' for them. It's strange, and a little frightening, that in some respects Israel's attitude and actions resembles the methods used against them throughout history.

You mention Iran, and Iran's alleged campaign to build nuclear weapons and the threat they pose to Israel. What about Israel's nuclear weapons? Supposedly Israel has between two and three hundred of them. What about the threat they pose to the entire Middle East? Surely you don't think that Israel can remain the only state in the region with a nuclear arsenal for ever? What does it say about the nature of Israeli culture that one is perpared to contemplate using such weapons in the event that Israel is in danger of losing some future war with a resurgent Arabia? Isn't using nuclear weapons against Arab cities and wiping out millions of civilians, in reality, a 'holocaust'? A potential holocaust perpetrated by Jews on another people? Can a people who've been through the Holocaust really contemplate launching a Holocaust? If the Holocaust is arguably the greatest crime in human history, how can one even imagine or plan to repeat it, and this time by Jews?

Is this provocative too? But isn't there a perverse logic involved in what's happening in the Middle East? That we are moving not towards 'peace', because the Palestinians will never 'surrender' on terms dictated by a victorious and all-powerful Israel. All that's happening is the Israel is causing more and more resentment and anger.

But it's not too late for Israel. The Arab 'resurgence' is still in its infancy, but the Arab client states, with their corrupt leadeships won't be around for ever. Eventually they will be swept away, and others will take power, others who have no intention of 'negotiating' or 'compromising' with Israel, because they don't believe Israel understands these terms or can be trusted.

Mubarak, and his type represent the past and are doomed. Hamas and Hezbollah are the future, and bizarrely, Israel has 'created' them, a mirror-image of Zionism!

The last war in Lebanon showed that Israel is not invincable on the battlefield anymore. It was a turning point, perhaps the highwater-mark of Israeli power in the Middle East. Shouldn't Israel learn from this?

Israel should make peace with the Palestinians now, before it's too late and the time is past. One could withdraw to the pre 1967 borders and this would possibley, probably be enough to secure a non-perfect, but a kind of 'peace'. It would be an historic compromise and might work. It would undermine the extremists on all sides and show that Israel wasn't only interested in taking more and more Arab land, because it, temporarily, have the might to do it.

Yet, I doubt this will happen. I think we are heading for more wars and terrible wars in the Middle East. The Right in Israel cynically uses the Arab threat to frighten Israeli public opinion so they can achieve power over the state and fleece it.

Maybe a few Iranian nuclear weapons migh not be such a bad idea? Iran is surrounded by nuclear armed countries. India, Pakistan, Russia, China, Israel, the United States. Maybe if Israel realized that it's ultimate weapon, it's ultimate threat, nuclear war, was not something it could start with total impunity and without any risk, then it might begin to contemplate the wisdom of changing course and entering meaningful negotiations for a real and just peace?

Harvey
19 May 2008 at 09:31

To Carl Jones

Shame on the NS Moderators for allowing an inveterate antisemite and holocaust denier to post his excrement on this site .

Ditto Cybertiger

Steve M
19 May 2008 at 11:11

Harvey, as the majority of NS readers have achieved a certain level of literacy, allowing Carl Jones' posts serves the purpose of ridiculing the anti-Semitic stance that he takes.

Carl Jones
19 May 2008 at 11:13

Havey; I am not a Holocaust denier.....I simply don`t know, I don`t know if 12 million died, or 6 million, or was it 1.3 million....

.....Bush and his neocon cabal says 19 Saudi`s crashed into the WTC on 9/11......sorry Harvey, but I don`t buy this NWO version of events.....and people like me are openly called "terrorists" by the US elite....

....no doubt you`d bring in laws forbidding anyone from questioning any official mantra?LOL

I don`t believe that 4 Muslim chaps carried out 7/7.....there are soooooo many holes in the official account.......

tell me Harvey, where does official lying start and stop?

If you start out like I do, believing the Second World War to be a Western elite construct....a design, then one must ask questions about the Holocaust.....its no good just blaming Hitler and the Germans for the Holocaust, no matter the extent of its reallity?

I have followed the Western construct that is Iran a nuclear threat, I know Iranians in London who would like to go home one day. From what I`ve picked up and been told, Iran has at least two externally aquired nuclear weapons.....even people at the CIA leaked this. At the time Porter Goss was in charge and he countered the Iran nuke leak with a warning memo to all CIA employees.....Goss`s action more or less confirmed what I had believe for some time.

During the US build up on Iran, we have seen staggering mishandling of US nuclear weapons which led to the demotion of 70 US militay personnel....and some were murdered. Six nuclear Tomahawks were slung under the wings of a B52 and moved to a US military base which is used for forwarding to the Middle East. Military rules on handling nuke movements, says warheads must be removed from the dellivery system and transported in the body of the plane, usually a transporter plane. These rules require at least two armed men working together, they are required to shoot anyone who breaks these rules and the rules are ridged.....so how did 70 US military personnel at two US military bases break the rules???????

We have had worrying speculation that nukes in Pakistan are unsecure. So it matter little either way, if we are being led to believe that nukes are insecure, or, if there is an actual conspiracy to detonate a nuclear weapon.

I believe there is a serious possibility that a nuke will be detonated and blamed on terrorists. There are many potential targets, but Israel tops this list. I DO NOT SAY THIS BECAUSE I WANT IT TO HAPPEN.

If Iran is attacked by the West/Israel, then Iran will fire both nukes at Israel and they will do this before their military systems become degraded It is my belief that this senario has been factored into the NWO plan. I hope I`m wrong. But as I`ve said before, the NWO has perfected the high art of "sacrifice".

Harvey; you are a rude foul mouthed twit who has NOTHING to debate, but a Second World War construct, which may, or may not be real.

Carl Jones
19 May 2008 at 11:21

Thanks Steve...I don`t claim to be a good writer or speller. My name is at the top....so no one is forcing anyone to read what I try and "right".LOL

In some ways, I have the advantage of not being burdened by the system...but you wouldn`t understand this perspective, because you are locked in. :)

Steve M
19 May 2008 at 11:23

Carl, that "second World War construct" is clearly true to all right minded students of the subject. Those that believe otherwise should be far more honest with themselves than you are.

Don't you know what you are?

redharry
19 May 2008 at 11:33

markg wrote, 'Redharry - On Carl Jones, you dismiss him as being irrelevant, but I think the problem with him is that he reveals a mania that I fear is not entirely unrelated to the one eyed hatred that you and other posters have toward Israel.'

Complete nonsense.

As for Martin Bright and his funding by a neo-con arms dealer, perhaps he can answer for himself. I notice he hasn't had the guts to reply to any of my points.

subprimate
19 May 2008 at 11:37

Writeon has provided some historical context to what is happening - the book War & Peace & War by Peter Turchin, based on the ideas of Ibn Khaldun, are highly relevent to the situation. How does one create a civilisation or 'imperial culture'? By forcing people to unite against a common enemy. Israel has brought enlightenment and democracy to itself, but it is also creating the conditions among its enemies for united sacrifice and the culture for a future democratic nationalist Arab politics. The article by Bassem Naeem in The Guardian 12 May gives the lie to Bright's caricatures of Hamas as 'a terrorist group', rather than the legitimately elected government of Palestinians.

All this NWO jewish conspiracy stuff is a tragic red herring and feeds the apologists for Israel. Jones has exposed his real views with his last post. Horrible.

Carl Jones
19 May 2008 at 12:00

subprimate; please tell me my real views....history is littered with terrorist constructs which are designed to further a given agenda...the US/UK/Israel needs a trigger event to start their next war. Its not a difficult concept to understand.

Carl Jones
19 May 2008 at 12:07

Steve; you are asking the question, find out for for yourself. Mind you, I could start liking your attention....do you work for GCHQ? Or is it the IDF?

Steve M
19 May 2008 at 12:39

Or the Elders?

waga
19 May 2008 at 13:00

Martin

Yes but I was hoping for more on why. Why is it that if I say in public that I'm Jewish and support Israel, I see faces become red and contorted, veins pop out of necks, and pure bile pour forth. Why do people care so much about this and care so little about things that logic would say they should based on their stated principles?

Martin Bright
19 May 2008 at 13:36

waga

Sorry I couldn't answer your question. But I too find it somewhat mystifying. I guess I left the question hanging because the answer is difficult even for me to stomach...

Martin Bright
19 May 2008 at 13:37

Steve M

Welcome to my crazy world. Depressing isn't it?

Andy Gill
19 May 2008 at 14:00

Thank you Martin for having the guts to challenge the appalling bigotry of the juvenile left. in this country. As many of the comments in reply to your article demonstrate, this visceral hatred of Israel colours their rhetoric like a brown stain on a pair of underpants. You can almost smell the anti-semitism coming of the screen.

Steve M
19 May 2008 at 14:03

Oh I don't know, Martin. The occasional chink of light shining through will do for me.

subprimate
19 May 2008 at 14:04

Of course the carefully choreographed trigger event for wars has been tried and tested by the US at least since the Alamo - Sam Houston let them die so Texas could be conquered, 1898, 1941 etc etc. I happen to think Roosevelt, if he really did know about Pearl harbour, was right to bring the US into the war. But then I also think nazism was not a Jewish conspiracy.

Britain, as in so many cases, bears huge responsibility for the suffering of the Palestinians, starting with Balfour and the occupation of Jerusalem in 1917 and the betrayal of the Arabs' hope for self-determination.

But if it is all one big conspiracy, you NWO types should give up now. Propaganda is just part of politics, and the media and false flag operations both play key roles in it, such as with massively one-sided pieces like this. It's nothing to do with 'the left' as such, unless you mean New Labour and its total subservience to Israel/America.

For the record, Iran has not attacked anyone in more than two centuries - it's struggle for democracy and modernisation have been undermined by outside powers several times since 1900. Anglo-Iranian Oil Company anyone? 1953? The western-backed Iraqi invasion of 1980, shooting down of Iranian airliner by US Navy 1988 killing 270 etc - terrorism is a much abused word. Go see Winter Soldier.

Fran Waddams, Anglican Friends of Israel
19 May 2008 at 14:19

Martin

Thanks for this reasoned and reasonable article. You must have been aware of the flood of bile which would flow your way. It's a courageous man who'll risk this. Respect to you.

The ignorance which underpins criticism of Israel's foundation on this thread is staggering. Assertions that Israel is an alien insertion in the region overlook the continuous presence of a substantial Jewish community all over the Middle East - including the Holy Land - for thousands of years. About a million Jews lived in the region in 1948. The claim that Israel itself occupies Palestinian land airbrushes from history the fact that not only has there never been a Palestinian state in the region, but that Jews are the only indigenous people ever to have had a sovereign state on this piece of land. Smearing Israeli holocaust survivors as western colonialists is not only callous, but offensive; to characterise Israeli Jews as a whole as western colonialists is absurd. In the years following Israel’s foundation, about 800,000 Jews were forced to flee the Middle Eastern and North African countries in which their communities had existed for hundreds of years because of pogroms - and usually with only the clothes in which they stood – for a national homeland which was ready to receive them. To this day, Israeli society, for all its problems, is profoundly multi-cultural; it is also multi race and multi-faith.

In the face of such wilful ignorance, I can only conclude that for many of Israel's opponents, it's not so much her actions but her existence as a Jewish national home, which is objectionable. For these people, Palestinians have an inalienable right to national self governance, but Jews don't.

What words do we use to describe people who think like this? Is the answer too hard for Martin - and the rest of us to stomach?

Zkharya
19 May 2008 at 15:32

The 'leftist' hatred of Israel rather resembles the 'leftist' hatred of Jews, Judaism or Jews as alleged usurious or capitalist exploiters of the Christian peasants/working classes that existed before the Jewish state of Israel existed. Anti-Zionism is what antisemitism has evolved into, even as antisemitism is what Christian (and, to an extent, Islamic) anti-Judaism evolved into.

The Jewish state of Israel exists because for most of Christian and Islamic history Jews have been regarded as a nation dispossessed of their land as a punishment for their rejection of Jesus and the prophets.

This led to most European, North African and Asian Jews' being regarded as 'Palestinians/Judeans', or more nationally Jewish than, say, European or Arab, even in the 19th and 20th centuries, and their being murdered or driven out, before 1914, mostly to America, afterwards mostly to Palestine or what became Israel.

That is why the Jewish state of Israel comprises 41% of world Jewry today and, may, in fact, be the largest Jewish community in the world today.

All too often the new 'leftist' hatred of Israel or Zionism forgets (if it ever knew) the history described above. This current issue of New Statement carries an advertisement by nakba60.org which coins the term 'nakba denial'. It should also be attended by a reproach of those who 'forget' that Palestinian Jews accepted partition on 1947 while the Palestinian and other Arab Christian and Muslim leadership rejected it and resolved to thwart a Jewish state, dispossess the Jews of Palestine, or worse.

This ‘leftist’ studied ignorance of such history, its erasure or ‘forgetting’ of it, is not the same as holocaust denial, but nor is it unrelated either.

Palestinian Jews were entitled to do pretty much anything to preserve themselves, including ethnically cleansing lest they themselves be ethnically cleansed.

Worse dispossessions and displacements attended the births of other states, such as Greece and Turkey, India and Pakistan, whose legitimacy the anti-Zionist 'left' question not for a moment. Alone do they single out the one Jewish state in the world as so uniquely guilty of such an alleged Original Sin that it alone merits dissolution. I am not sure such an obsessive hatred can be characterised as anything other than antisemitism.

Michael B
19 May 2008 at 15:52

writeon

Why is Israel deemed to be "ultra" nationalist in any sense whatsoever? Obvious examples of ultra-nationalism during the 20th century are Japan, Italy and Germany, the axis powers, but you seem to equate nationalism with ultra-nationalism, which is a bit like equating personhood with highly neurotic or psychotic forms.

Zkharya
19 May 2008 at 16:24

Michael B, you make a good point. Very often Jewish nationalism, or Zionism, is automatically equated with nationalism in its most extreme form. Thus it is often characterised as innately 'supremacist', 'exclucivist' or 'racist'. To be sympathetic to a restored Jewish state and the Zionism that gave birth to it is deemed to be in some sense all of the above perjorative terms.

Michael B
19 May 2008 at 16:38

Zkharya,

Yes, that seems to be case, yet I've never seen the argument forwarded in cogent, in soundly explicated terms. Rather it seems to (unthinkingly and rather dogmatically) follow a certain anti-nationalist mood or stream within the general zeitgeist - if that's the proper term - of late modernity, itself so heavily influenced by all manner of ideological and intellectual excesses, tempers, moods and trends.

David D, London
19 May 2008 at 16:56

Thanks for such an honest & perceptive article. Many of the comments posted in response show (in frightening detail) how right you are

Zkharya
19 May 2008 at 16:59

Well, Michael, to put it in, I think, its simplest terms, it holds Palestinian nationalism legitimate, but Jewish nationalism not, rather, in fact, in terms of right versus wrong, good versus evil. Even black versus white (Israeli Jews being racially 'white', Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims being racially 'black').

Zionism is essentialized as some abstract, evil force called 'colonialism'. a purely greedy desire to acquire that which belongs to others, to exploit Palestinian Arab Christian and Muslim Third Worlders, very much as Jews were held to be capitalist-usurer exploiters of Christian (and, now, to an extent, Muslim) peasant-working classes.

For the dogmatic anti-Zionist, the Israeli-Zionist Jew occupies in the anti-Zionist's weltenschaaung the place of essential colonial exploiter, even as the Jew occupied the place of essential capitalist-usurer in that of the antisemite, and the Jewish state of Israel is its geo-political expression on earth.

The Israeli-Zionist Jew is, of course, also the 'crucifier' of the Palestinian Arab Christian or Muslim, even as for a mediaeval Christian, the Jew was the crucifier of Christ, the persecutor of his followers, and the enemy of all things Christian in Christendom. Now that the majority of these Jews have left Europe-Christendom, so too has shifted the focus of that hatred.

Dr Martin Meenagh
19 May 2008 at 16:59

Martin--I agree with you. this was a balanced and fair article and I for one would direct all those who call themselves 'left' to the tradition of reason from which democratic politics draws. Where are the democracies in the middle east? Where are the states that pay attention to a notion of law as something other than whim and utility? And what is the Islamist and regional reaction--two different things-- to these questions?

Clearly, Israel, and to an extent if it had a chance, lebanon, are the places any one decent would look to as a base in which people could be better than their worst selves. Yet these have been laid under siege with bombs and threats and hatred, from all sides and from within. They have been driven near madness by hatred, and yet they are still free. So why is it that people who call themselves 'left' want to support dictators in uniform and fascists of religious and political stripe? I write as a Catholic, but when I read half the comments on here, I am a jew, frankly.

I don't think people of goodwill who disagree with my zionism should be so ready to condemn the zionism of Israel's founders and the dream of a social democratic state in the Middle East; nor should they tolerate the bilious jew-hatred that may accompany their qualms about Israel's response to relentless attempts to destroy it.

Frankly, Martin, you have been brave and this great article is to your credit.

Cybertiger
19 May 2008 at 17:13

@waga

"Why is it that if I say in public that I'm Jewish and support Israel, I see faces become red and contorted, veins pop out of necks, and pure bile pour forth."

Killing children is no big deal. Killing Palestinian children appears to be a price worth paying to defend the Israeli state.

http://www.jerusalemites.org/articles/english/oct2004/19.htm

I hate what Israel has become ... and this is why.

Zkharya
19 May 2008 at 17:28

Hi Cybertiger, you silly bigotted pussycat,

'Killing children is no big deal. Killing Palestinian children appears to be a price worth paying to defend the Israeli state.'

Name any state that in its defence against those that would destroy has not killed children (clue: not the United States of America). Also, you clearly think that, not only is the Jewish state of Israel fundamentally illegitimate, and hardly entitled to do anything in its defence, you also think its Jewish citizens should be removed to the state of Texas (founded upon ethnic cleansing far worse than that of the 1947-49 Palestine war, and, literally, genocide).

robbie
19 May 2008 at 17:32

It was disappointing to find the New Statesman ‘Israel at 60; anniversary special’ contained among the five articles on the issue, not one Palestinian voice (excepting a seven word quote in Avi Shlaim’s article), thus assisting in the tradition of denial of the Palestinian. The pictures show only Israelis and all as victims.

Since Sept. 2000 the Israeli army has killed more than 5000 Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, about 1000 Israelis have been killed in the same period. No mention is made of the 10,400 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including many elected representatives, nor of the 5000 Palestinian children arrested since 2000, though the one Israeli soldier held by Hamas and two in Lebanon do feature. One photo shows the remnants of Hamas home-made rockets but nothing is said of the high-tech Israeli weapons arsenal including cluster bombs, which were strewn across Lebanon in 2006, or the state-of the art missiles which caused large numbers of civilian deaths and injuries in Gaza recently, nor of Israel’s estimated 400 nuclear warheads.

Most disappointing was Bright's article. In being so uncritical of the 'lefty open-hearted idealist' he seems to share her outrage at the use of apartheid to describe Israel. Have they not noticed the separate settler towns, separate settler roads, hundreds of checkpoints and the pass system imposed on one section of the population? Desmond Tutu, after his visit described, 'The humiliation of the Palestinians' as 'suffering like us'.

Martin Bright says the Left has betrayed Israel. It is because the Israeli government has endlessly disregarded UN resolutions and International Law with impunity that those, not just the Left, who have regard for human and civil rights, have taken the Palestinian side. Too often those who criticised Israel were called anti-semitic. Bright distances himself from this charge, but wants ‘us’ to support Israel because of the threat from Iran and Islamism. Here he is back with Bush, Blair, Brown and ‘the West’.

Realising that it is Israel which is regarded by many, not just in the Middle East, as the major threat to world peace, and acknowledging the Nakba and the injustice of making Palestinians pay for the European-made Holocaust, might help towards a healthier debate on how peace and justice can be achieved.

As anti-Zionist socialist Jews we criticise Israel because we are democrats, internationalists and anti-racists.

Yours sincerely,

Miriam Scharf

Simon Shaw

Michael B
19 May 2008 at 17:41

Zkharya,

Yes, though Arab Christians are more in the mode, if my intuition is correct here, of allowing themselves to be co-opted by Arab and Persian Muslim actors. That doesn't excuse their (the former's) relative passivity and surrender and compliance, but they are of secondary and tertiary concern, not primary concern.

The real irony and particularly telling passage is in your first graph: all those forces and powers in the west who support Arab Sunni - aka Palestinian - nationalism, when there's ample evidence those aspirations are little more than a pawn or rook on the larger chess board of Arab and Persian Muslim anti-Israel, antiSemitic and anti-Judaic maneuverings. Simultaneously, they fail to support Israel's national sovereignty via all manner of confused and cynical machinations and, in general, morally and intellectually muddled thinking.

And of course the supposed colonial and neo-colonial motifs/rationales are in fact one prominent aspect of that muddled quality.

Zkharya
19 May 2008 at 17:52

Miriam and Simon,

as anti-Zionists, you clearly think the Jewish state of Israel a fundamentally illegitimate entity a priori and, thus, hardly entitled to do anything to defend or preserve itself. Thus you are welcome to criticise Israel' s actions as you please, but she is hardly obliged to pay you any mind.

And you are entitled to proclaim yourselves anti-Zionist Jews. But Israel comprises 41% of the world's Jews, and is likely to become the largest Jewish community in the world mid 21st century, if not already. As social, internationalist anti-Zionist Jews, you only exist in the liberal democracy of the United Kingdom because you became extinct, American or Israeli everywhere else.

Laughable is your citing of 5000 Palestinian versus of 1000 Israeli fatalities as if it meant anything. Israel may have killed more Palestinians than vice versa, but the Palestinians killed as many as they could get. As is your castigating Israelis' for killing more Lebanese Shi'a than vice versa in a war initiated by the independent, and now imperial, Lebanese Shi'a state of Hizullahstan.

Alf Tupper
19 May 2008 at 19:05

What a brave soul you are Martin Bright.

Certainly got the old wires warm.

What's that I can hear? Could it be the faint sound of pennies starting to drop?

Get Used To It
19 May 2008 at 19:21

Lovely to see the same old grumpies harping on about Israel. Venting their frustration yet again.

Well, it's easier than digging a cellar, I suppose.

Mr Eugenides
19 May 2008 at 20:48

Carl Jones:

"its no good just blaming Hitler and the Germans for the Holocaust"

Thank you. It's been a long day and I needed a laugh.

Martin, I think your point about extremist anti-Semitic bile on the internet has, yet again, been made for you.

Steve M
19 May 2008 at 21:22

This 'you're very brave' business interests me because it's a tactic claimed by both pro and anti Zionists. Do you feel that bravery was needed for you to write this piece, Martin?

Zkharya
19 May 2008 at 21:36

'This 'you're very brave' business interests me because it's a tactic claimed by both pro and anti Zionists. Do you feel that bravery was needed for you to write this piece, Martin?'

Why ask Martin? Did he claim he was being brave? Surely you should ask Alf why he thinks Martin was being brave. Not a few anti-ZIonists on this thread have claimed that Martin's motives flow from venality (i.e. taking ZIonist Jewish gold e.g. Levi999) rather than conviction. Asking Martin implies the strawman that he claimed he was being brave which, to take a leaf from your book, is a rhetorical device used by advocates of any and every proposition.

writeon
19 May 2008 at 22:01

Most nations have 'foundation myths', and so does Israel, there is nothing unusual about this, nothing particularly odious, though I think one needs to be sceptical about the validity of the national narative when used to justify or explain the creation of the nation, in this case Israel. But then this whole question, the history of the creation of Israel and what exactly happened in the war, is complex, controversial, disputed, and the Israeli version of events cannot be accepted as the one, true, history; as the Palestinian perspective tells a completely different story.

Surely this is the core question, the Palesinians and the Israelis have two histories that are interwoven. The two people's both claim 'ligitimate' rights to the same land, both believe they have right and justice, and even 'God' on their side. Does questioning the exclusive right and ligitimacy of the Israeli claim on the land, mean that one totally supports the Palesinian claim, and visa versa? I don't think it does. It's perfectly possible to recognize that both etnic groups have a claim on the land. What do we mean by 'legitimate' in this context anyway?

I fail to see why it's deemed anti-semetic or anti-Jewish to point out that there are ultra-nationalists in Israel. I did not say that all Jews living in Israel were ultra-nationalists. Surely one cannot deny that nationalism has played a central role in the creation of Israel? If Zionism isn't a nationalist movement, then I don't know what is. Clearly some people would prefer to call it a movement of national liberation, or an independence movement, but surely then one would be uncritically accepting the Israeli perspective and ignoring the ligitimate alternative perspective held by the Palestinians? Why should one be biased in favour of Israel. Why should one choose to be biased in farvour of the Palestinians? Why can't both peoples' perspectives be 'right' and 'wrong' in principle? Why does one have to choose sides in this conflict?

I'll admit that I am critical and sceptical of the 'foundation myth' of Israel, but then I'm sceptical of most of these stories. I'm also sceptical of the history of nationalism, especially when it gets out of control. All in all I think the growth of nationalism and the rise of the exclusive nation state and the cult of ethnicity has been a disaster for mankind, especially for Europe, and especially for European Jews.

In a nutshell, the emerging centralized state used the myth of nationalism as a cultural propaganda tool designed to crush internal opposition to the state, the old fuedal regionalism, minorities, and build effective national armies and fight wars against other states who were pursing the same dubious nationalist goals. Later crude, rabiate nationalism was used to fuel total industrial scale warfare and undermine the threat to nationalist state from the growing internationalist socialist movement. Surely, given our collective history we should be wary of getting too carried away by nationalism? Surely Jews, of all people, should stop and reflect about the character of Israeli nationalism and where it may be leading them? And clearly there are people in Israel and Jews around the world that are concerned about these trends. Often one feels the debate inside Israel, about the changing character of Israel, is more rational, more open, braver; than the debate in the United States or Europe. This is positive and proves that Israel is not a bad as its detractors and rabid critics maintain.

But this whole idea that Israel has somehow been betrayed by the Left is highly problematic, and sounds more like a smear, like the smear that people who criticize the ultra-nationalism, bordering on neo-facism of George Bush, are somehow anti-American. If there really is so much criticism of Israel from the Left, I think it's connected to Israel's alliance with the United States and a form of guilt by association, that the Right in Israel and the US seem to have the same agressive and warped and dangerous worldview, but that is, perhaps, another story.

Steve M
19 May 2008 at 22:03

A fair point, I suppose, although I didn't claim that Martin claimed he was being brave. I just asked him if he thought that bravery was needed.

I'm afraid that my political chess doesn't go as far as to use the 'implied strawman' gambit. Shit, I'm having difficulty enough understanding the concepts of Imperialism and anti-Imperialism, although I was amused to read on 'Harry's Place': when, on a not dissimilar post, someone wrote, "The legacy of British colonialism lives on with British sanctimony." How true.

Steve M
19 May 2008 at 22:04

(that was to Zkharya)

Zkharya
19 May 2008 at 22:16

OK, Steve, if I seemed imperious, I apologise. I was just saying what I thought.

Zkharya
19 May 2008 at 22:32

Writeon,

I agree with according Zionist, Jewish nationalism the same validity as Palestinian Arab Christian and Islamic. That was the principle behind partition.

Of course it is as legitimate to question the Israeli, Zionist historical, or quasi historical, narrative as it is the Palestinian Arab Christian and Islamic.

My own take on it, for what it is worth, is that Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims have been 'Jews' for the last 60 years or so even as Jews have been 'Palestinians' for the last 2000 years or so. I do not expect you to necessarily to agree with me, but I am prepared to offer justification for that view.

But I do question the 'Surely of all people the Jews...' thing. The implication is that Jews are obliged to behave in a more moral fashion than Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims, which I think is a vicious argument. If we are going to discuss Jews qua Jews is it is only fair to discuss Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims qua Christians and Muslims. Palestinian, as other, Christian and Islamic tradition, for most of Palestinian Christian and Islamic history, until they recently decided to forget, is that, not only are the Jews a nation, they are a nation g-d has dispossessed of their land, by his servant, Rome, the original western European colonial empire, as a punishment for their rejection of Jesus and the prophets. Palestinian Christians and Muslims have been perfectly happy to regard Jews' dispossession as the proper lot of both, to the benefit of the former, but the detriment of the latter.

Who is the more, or less, obliged to behave in a perfectly moral fashion? Or to behave in a more, or less, considerate or generous manner, one to the other?

It is not antisemitic to remark ultra-nationalists in Israel. But I think it is something like antisemitism to essentialise all or most Israeli Jews as ultra-nationalists, or to ignore, in addition, Palestinian Christian or Muslim ultra-nationalists. Of course, it all rather depends how one defines 'ultra-nationalism'.

greene
19 May 2008 at 22:58

from a former liberal in NYC, thank you so much Martin for this illustration of why Jews are concerned and justifiably as can clearly be seen by so many of the posters here. I no longer trust the left and it's easy to see why ...

Zkharya
19 May 2008 at 23:02

Writeon,

I also question your assertion that the Jewish state used nationalism to 'crush internal opposition'. The Yishuv and the state that emerged from it arose in an environment where Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims as a rule totally rejected the right of most Jews to be there (in the 1936-39 revolt, the cry was 'The British to the sea, the Jews to the grave'). There were other Palestinian voices of moderation and compromise, but they were crushed by the leadership that emerged in the Husseini clan. If you castigate the Jews for their nationalist exclusivity you must necessarily do the same for Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims.

Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims were among the most conservative on earth: the Palestinian churches protested most vehemently when Vatican II absolved the Jews of responsibilty for the crucifixion. For them fear of dispossession at the hands of Jews was inextricably linked with fear of suffering in their turn what the Jews themselves had suffered. The earliest Palestinian nationalist literature, in expressing their fears, grasps for the metaphor of original Jewish dispossession. This was perfectly natural since the dispossession of Jews Christians and Muslims held to be their punishmenf for rejecting Jesus and the prophets was the traditional historical model most ready to hand. Later they became more 'sophisticated' and employed other models e.g. that of Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, Black South Africans etc. But the original Palestinian leadership in the person of Haj Amin Al Husseini and the Arab Higher Commitee was quite content to use the more traditionally Palestinian models, leading the former to promulgate the final solution for the Jews of Araby as well as Europe and Palestine, and the latter to acquiesce in, if not endorse (though there is evidence it did), Arab intentions to thwart partition, dispossess Palestinian Jews, or worse.

Zkharya
19 May 2008 at 23:36

Dear Write On,

I've re-read your post and alot of it seems reasonable, so I'm sorry if I missed any of the point of it.

Zkharya
19 May 2008 at 23:38

Carl Jones,

for the benefit of the audience, would you please confirm you are anti- not pro- Zionist?

Thank you.

writeon
20 May 2008 at 00:12

Zkharya,

The use of the phrase 'ultra-nationalist' was not meant to tar everyone in Israel, surely this is obvious. When one uses the term 'America' one doesn't mean everybody in the United States, but refers normally to their government or ruling elite.

'Ultra' doesn't mean one is making a 100% match between the classic totalitarian, ultra-nationalist regimes of the twentieth century, and the current situation in Israel. However, there are people in Israel, political parties, members of parliament, members of the Israeli government, who do make statements and have attitudes that I think can reasonably be described as 'very' or 'extreme' 'militant' or even 'ultra' nationalist. But that's up to them, and one cannot deny their existance only debate their significance.

Israeli politicians make outrageous statements about the Palesinians and Arabs and Iraians too. Israeli politicians threaten Iran too, increasingly. American politicians, Hilary Clinton, using the same form of translation, to wipe Iran off the map, should it attack Israel. The idea that it's only Iran that makes threats is simply not true and is form of pre-war propaganda designed to soften public opinion for the coming war with Iran, because we all know this is coming, the question is when is it coming and what will the consequences be.

I'd prefer there to be no more wars in the Middle East, but I believe this is a futile hope, too much is at stake there, especially for the United States. I can see why the Right in Israel wants to ally itself with the neo-fascist war-party, but what of most ordinary people in Israel, what do they get out of more war? One could imagine a different future for Israel than being a 'mercenary' for the interests of the United States in the Middle East.

And I do think that Jews should have higher standards than others after all they've been through, especially after the evil of the Holocaust. My father lost count of the friends he lost and the culture that was destroyed and for what? For a crazed, sick, perverted, fantasy. The fantasy that the Germans 'folk' were exceptional, had a destiny, had a 'land' that was special, an exclusive culture above the culture of others, had special, ligitimate rights above other lower, barbarians. That they were surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies waiting to attack them. That they needed secure borders for only their chosen people. That they needed 'room to live' and nothing was going to stand in the way of their destiny. That one could herd people of a lower order behind walls and fences and control them and crush them. Denying them the right to move and travel, controlling their acess to food and water and medicine, forcing them to live like animals in cages.

So, Jewish people, part of my family, who've lived through that kind of terror, horror, and dehumanization, have a special knowledge of what people can do to each other based on a gigantic lie. A lie so strong and so potent, it appears to be the truth. And that knowledge brings with it a responsibility. A responsibility to make shure that what happened during the Holocaust is never forgotten or repeated - anywhere.

Steve M
20 May 2008 at 00:41

Carl, It's time for your medication. You're just beginning to act very, very slightly crazy.

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 00:45

Well, Write On, it's late and I'm tired, so I'll answer briefly.

I didn't accuse you of tarring all Israeli Jews with the same brush. As for the Jews' behaving better than their enemies, that is all very well for Israeli Jews to decide, but I am not sure it is for anyone else, least of all gentile cultural Christian New Statesman readers, or Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims.

As it is I think it is ridiculous that Israel endures rocket attacks yet still supplies electricity, food, fuel and medicine. Decide for yourself whether that was charactistic behaviour of Nazi Germans, to whom you compare Israeli Jews below.

Sure Israeli politicians say outrageous things. And so do Palestinian.

If you want to portray IsraelI Jews as Nazi Germans, that is your affair. It seems pretty obvious to me that they are not, nor do they treat Palestinian Arab Christians or Muslims in that fashion, no more than do Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims behave as Jews for the most part did in relation to Nazi Germans.

But whatever gets you off.

Israeli Jews obviously originated in circumstances hardly happier than those of your family and they have to decide what is in their best interests. You can advise, from the comfort and security of your own personal situation, and maybe they will listen, but that is up to them.

Ahmadinejad and his regime have said and acted in ways extremely aggressive and threatening of Israel. If you missed that you are an idiot and few Israeli Jews are going to give you the time of day.

As to Israeli nuclear weapons, her neighbours, including the Palestinians, have threatened Palestinian or Israeli Jews with destruction several times over at least the last 60 years. I tend to agree with Howard Jacobson that if Israel did not possess WMDs she would not exist.

You say, 'Jewish people, part of my family'. Are you Jewish?

writeon
20 May 2008 at 08:09

Zkharya,

I have not 'portrayed Israel Jews as Nazi Germans' in my post above. I did not say they were equivalent or the same, you wrote this, I didn't.

I was writing about the ideological nature of extreme nationalism and many of the core 'ideas' in the Nazi/German, folk or race myth and how dangerous these ideas are, and ideas like these are not exclusive to just Germans or Nazis, and that is part of the trouble with them and extreme nationalism or militant patriotism.

You appear to have read what I wrote about German volk myths and ideas about the importance of blood and land, and ernoneously concluded that I was directly comparing the ideology of Nazi Germany with contemporary Israel, still it was getting late in the day.

Why did I mention the monsterous myths of the Nazi Germany? Because members of my family suffered directly from the forces of extreme, militant, ultra-nationalism released in Europe and finding its most extreme expression in Nazi Germany. My extende d family, spread out over the continent, lost a lot; money, houses, land, their culture and most importantly their hopes, dreams and lives.

It's true I have a very comfortable life, but I don't feel comfortable knowing that we are heading for yet more war in the Middle East, a war against Iran that could go anywhere. It could start a conflagration that might set the entire region ablaze for decades and I don't think perpetual war is in Israel's or anyone elses interests.

Why should it matter if I'm Jewish or not? Is Martin Bright Jewish? Is this relevant for his article and his arguments? Surely if he was Jewish he'd say so in his article so people would be aware of his personal perspective and 'bias'. Things would be out in the open. Personally I don't care what religion he is or what his 'ethnic' background is. I'm as critical and sceptical about the whole 'volk' myth as I am about nation states and nationalism.

But I do have people in my large family who were 'Jews', unfortunately that branch was almost totally obliterated during WW2, along with many of the others who lived in Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Austria, France and the UK.

Bizarrely, the Jewish branch were highly educated and highly integrated into their homelands and had mostly bought into the 'myth of nationalism', like most people did at the time. Nationalism was the 'glue' that held these new nation states together. They fought in wars for countries that later persecuted them, but that is way back.

I am proud of my Jewish heritage and the culture that produced it. As far as I've discovered they thought of themselves first and foremost as Austrians, with a Jewish cultural background. They were mixed bunch, but mostly professional people, cultured people, with a very radical social and political stance, some would call them 'champagne anarchists' a trait I too seem to have somehow inhereted from them! Indeed I first began to interest myself in anarchist history and theory because my grandmother mentioned that one of her cousins in Vienna had been a fervent anarchist in his student days. So maybe I should 'blame' the Jewish gene for my errant ways?

taghioff.info
20 May 2008 at 08:39

@Martin

"Now it has a neighbor whose president has not only made that threat explicit, but who intends to develop the capacity to do it. In such a conflict, which has already begun for the people of southern Israel, on whose side will British left-liberal opinion be?"

Dualism again Martin. The western philosophical tradition is very bad at avoiding false dichotomies. To put it more pragmatically, how the hell are you supposed to solve a conflict by taking sides?

Israel's case is simple: There are human beings living in Israel , some of whom have only known Israel. At the same time there are other human beings being brutally oppressed nearby, and this is leading to anger, misery and ongoing conflict.

Screw history, screw taking sides, this is like a divorce, and the only real question is how do you produce a deal where everyone can move forward with dignity and a decent way of life?

It is solidarity with the people on the ground that left-wing politics is about, and so I have to repeat, what on earth does that have to do with taking sides? Most Israelis and Palestinians that I know just want this bullshit to stop, so they can get on with their lives.

So for a third time, what an earth does that have to do with taking sides?

The idea of sides is an elite idea, because it is the Elites in both Israel and Palestine who gain political legitimacy by continuing the conflict, convincing enough of their respective populations that continuing conflict is unavoidable. But this view, of taking sides, ignores the wishes of the majority, who would rather there were no sides to take.

As for the British left, well instead of agonizing over whether we are pro or anti Israel, maybe we should think about international issues such as stopping the Globa arms trade, of which we are a major part, which systematically fuels these types of conflict.

Because the military justifies its existence by saying there are guns out there. But the more money the military have, the more political muscle they have, and so the more militarised our decision making becomes. So lets stop thinking Nation X versus Nation Y and start thinking about how to make the world a better place for the majority. Without more systemic thinking we are stuffed.

writeon
20 May 2008 at 09:05

Leaving the history of my extended family aside for a minute, or for ever, I do think these nationalist wars are truly terrible events and should be avoided at almost all costs. I had family on fighting in both camps during WW1, in Britain, Russia, Austria and France. Protestants, Catholics, Jews and non-believers! I think, for the most part their sacrifices were a terrible, horrible, waste.

In WW2 it all mostly repeated itself again, only one of them in the Ukraine was supposedly conscripted into the collapsing Waffen SS, who were desparate for more 'Aryans', at the ripe age of 17. He vanished off the face of the earth somewhere in Eastern Prussia in late 1944.

Having been involved in so much war and senseless destruction and meaningless loss, I am vehermently opposed to modern warfare, too many people die and for very dubious reasons. In fact war may be the opposite of reason. War is anti-reason.

I think many of the articles in this edition of the New Statesmen are part of pre-war propaganda for the next war in the Middle East. The Big One, aimed at Iran. I'm not sure whether the journalists are fully aware of what they are involved in or not. I'm not even clear about whether these articles about Israel are a cynical attempt to court controversy and increase the profile and sales of the magazine, or if they are genuine.

We seem to be moving towards war with Iran and we are following basically the same people and the same 'propaganda recipe' we followed in relation to Iraq, have we really forgotten how we were duped and lied to before? Why should it be any different this time around? Only, supposedly, this time it is. Iran is the new, new, Nazi Germany and Hitler, once again, again, has risen from his shallow grave!

Surely after Iraq we should be highly sceptical of the beating war-drum and the stories we are being told? The basic, core idea, is that Iran is, once again, run by barbarian madmen, who are a danger to the entire world and are intent on building weapons of mass destruction. One cannot deal or negotiate with them because they are 'mad' and are willing to see their country and people wiped off of the map in a nuclear attack, but it's a price worth paying because they would have taken Israel with them to Hell, or in the Iranian case, Heaven, their 'just' reward from God for destroying Israel and the hated Jews!

Are we really supposed to believe this wild, hysterical, propaganda about Iran? Does this narative seem plausable? Are we to assume that Iran would sacrifice an entire culture and civilization for the dubious 'honour' of attacking Israel? It's not as if they would benefit from destroying Israel is it, after all they would cease to exist? A high price to pay for a very temporary 'joy' at seeing Israel in flames and it's cities destroyed.

Where is the evidence that the Iranian leadership is contemplating collective suicide for themselves? But of course, if they are all 'mad' or 'insane' then logic doesn't apply to them, they want to die in a nuclear holocaust, it is their holy destiny! How convinient for us! We can justify almost anything as long as our enemy is 'mad' and therefore capable of anything and ready to pay any price, because the Iranians are 'mad'.

Don't we use this form of argument over and over again about our enemies? Haven't we heard it all before, only of course this time it's different, this time it's true, this time it's for real!

I think we are dealing with something close to 'Witchcraft' here. We believe what we want to believe and what we need to believe, to justify and ligitimate our newest war of agression, our newest attack, and no story, no matter how fantastical, how absurd, how false, is below us. It's war hysteria once again, time is running out and we can't risk waiting, and on and on, and maybe, just maybe, it's we who are 'mad', mad for more war!

hope
20 May 2008 at 09:08

Weak article. If the aim was to explore the question "why do liberals hate Israel so much?" (let's just suppose they do) and to look at those reasons and show they are misplaced, it fails completely.

So there are some nice people in Israel and Martin has met some on a BICOM trip. Good. But address the issues.

Instead it's back to the rockets. We know Israel is under some stress and we can all appreciate that being on the receiving end of them must be not very nice. But frankly they are pin pricks and the civilian deaths on the other side are many times greater. Address the issues.

Claddach
20 May 2008 at 09:16

Scanning his previous posts here's a little background on Carl Jones. (And there's more)

He believes Hitler was a British Agent.

He claims "Real power lies in the City of London and with the elite families, such as the Rothschilds (Lord). MI6 is tasked with protecting British interests, translated, this means the elite Jews. Look at who owns the New Statesman and look at what happens to editors who question the NWO (New World Order) agenda."

He's just wacky about those Rothschilds "By far, the most dominant elite family are the Rothchilds. The British arm of the vast family are at the top of the global hill. Lord Jacob Rothschild is the most powerful man on Earth. An example of this power; before Putin arrested Mikhail Khodorkovsky of Yokos fame, Khodorkovsky signed over all the voting rights to his Yokos shares to Lord Jacob Rothschild....this is a statement of power....why do you think all the oligarchs are in London living under the protection of MI6." OK

Here he is on the importance of numbers: "I suppose it was a fluke that on the day Blair announced his date of departure from No 10, he had 6 days, 6 weeks and left before he left in the 6th month of June?

The Freedom Tower in New York will be 1,665 ft tall, move the one on to the five and you get "666"! No doubt another fluke.

I suppose these dates are also flukes....tsunami 26th December 2004, Earthquake under the Iranian city of Bam 26th Demember 2003 and cyclone Zoe in the Pacific on 26th December 2002....these Freemasons do love their numbers!"

Someone mentioned in a previous post that Carl Jones was irrelevant. He's not. He's fun. Barking mad, but fun. And just remember Carl, we're not laughing with you. We're laughing at you. Oh, and I know who you really are. But don't worry your secret's safe with me. I'm a Jew.

writeon
20 May 2008 at 09:28

Hope,

I don't think one wishes to 'address the issues'. I think we are moving beyond that, or maybe that should be below that? Examining the issues require a calm, reflective, rational, balanced frame of mind, and dealing with the core issues is dangerous for the pre-war effort, it could affect moral and the undermine our will to fight and attack the enemy with sufficient vigour and determination.

So we quietly drop the issues and instead concentrate on the mythology, which is managable and so much more useful than an examination of reality or the true attitudes of the enemy. In the run up to a war the last thing one wants is to see the 'others' as human beings like us, so we demonize them and turn them into 'madmen' and somehow less than us or even less than human, at least not as human as we are, and then we can slaughter them with something like a clear concience. Our wars, our killing of civilians, is 'just' and 'ligitimate'. They are savages and we are civilized, therefore our killing is, if not defined as 'good', then at least it isn't 'bad'. It is 'unfortunate' that so many have to die, but we would have avoided it if we could, only we couldn't, and anyway they really brought it on themselves and forced us to level their cities.

Such has been the core ideology of Western imperialism on the bloody battlefield for centuries and it's just as hollow and false as it ever was, and we seem to never learn, don't really want to learn, and at heart we don't really care how many we kill, because we've deluded ourselves into thinking it's all in a 'good cause'. Heaven help us!

Harvey
20 May 2008 at 09:43

Carl Jones

My rubbish was collected 2 weeks running

Do I qualify as an elite Jew ?

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 09:49

Hi Write On,

I am in a lot of physical pain at the moment because I have a damaged left foot so cannot concentrate for long just now. I asked whether you were Jewish because you adduced your Jewish family as though you were writing 'as a Jew'. But I take it you are not Jewish, because you did not answer my straight forward question directly.

But, of course, you do not have to be Jewish to have or express an opinion on the matter.

Harvey
20 May 2008 at 09:58

Write on

Ordinarily I would have passed over your last post but reading through Debka last night ,an Israeli Intelligence appraisal web site Iwas amazed to read that Bush was hopping with the Israelis during his recent visit .

Apparently he demanded that they use their airforce to attack Hezbollah forces in the North of Beirut in order to maintain the pro Western Lebanese government whilst attacking with ground troops and tanks from the South.

Israel was under immense pressure to comply but refused.maintaining that the internal affairs of Lebanon was their own business.

Apparently Bush was unconcerned that he would still be in Israel when the inevitable missile retaliation was in progress.

Much of what makes this website does not make the main Israeli papers but I will take a look at Haaretz today.

Carl Jones
20 May 2008 at 10:03

Zkharaya; "audience"....what audience would this be?

I have used the term "Zionists" in other comments, but not in any of my comments to this article. I prefer to called them "elite Jews". Do I believe there is an "elite Jewish conspiracy", yes I do.

As we can see, some of the debates late comers, they have hijacked the agenda. Its to be expected after their supprising failure to have my comments censored.

The problem that is Israel, is a global one. When elite Jews can force the government of India to ban the transmission of all Arab satellite tv channels....

.....when six to nine undersea cables can be cut and there by wrecking internet access across parts of Asia and the ME.

While I will rant about the Palistinian issue, I believe it is a construct. ie, they like it the way it is. Every Middle East state is a client state of the West and the Western NWO agenda is dominated by "elite Jews".

Mr Bright attacked The Guardian newspaper, its considered a leftwing rag and as we can all see, it is supposedly the "left" who are anti Israel....

....again, this is a NWO construct. In the build up to the Iraq invasion, which I was against, it was THE GUARDIAN newspaper who was writing the most blood curdling pro-war articles.....so extreme were these pros, that I couldn`t bring myself to finish them....oh yes, I could read The Times and Telegraph, but The Guardian`s filth was on a different level and this a leftwing rag.

You see, in Amerika, all the MSM is owned, or controlled by elite Jews (inc UK, if you care to look)....even supposedly left leaning MSM. You see, the Amerikan right knows they can`t stop people having leftwing thoughts...well, not yet. So by owning and controlling the content of supposedly leftwing media, THEY control the leftwing agenda.....

.....THE GUARDIAN newspaper is a good British example of this and the NS is likely to be another..

My comments have caused the most controversy, yet they have proved to be beyond reasonable debate. Just look at the personal attacks, no one seriously questions the points I`ve raised. Even the NS had to have a meeting to decide their course of action. Clearly, there was nothing to be censored, yet there has been NO SERIOUS DEBATE.

So the only conclusion I can draw, is that there will never be a serious and fair debate on Israel and the elite Jewish domination of the Western political/media agenda will contiune unchecked. Israel, by any messure, is a failed state. The elite Jews and their NWO chums knows this to be true. Time is running out, so you can expects some very nasty shocks (as per previous comments). A warning to anyone in the Israeli region, get out ASAP. :)

Carl Jones
20 May 2008 at 10:06

Harvey; my rubbish gets collected TWICE A WEEK.....does this make me a 33 degree Mason?LOL

Harvey
20 May 2008 at 10:13

Write On

I was intigued to learn of your distant Jewish Austrian ancestry arguing over Zionism at a ball some 100 years ago .

Ignore the cynics out there who maintain that every anti zionist post seems to produce aconnection to Judaism as if that somehow makes it more acceptable .This is a variation of Some of my best friends happen to be Jews, usually said after making some negative Jewish remark.

I would ignore any such suggestion.

Incidentally do you have any names or dates regarding that incident in Vienna 100 years ago ?

Harvey
20 May 2008 at 10:14

No Carl

It makes you a candidate for a lobotomy by my carpenter.

Claddach
20 May 2008 at 10:40

Hi Carl Jones you appear to be very interested in numbers. How about C18. Does that mean anything. A little business up north, eh? A little porridge doesn't seemed to have sorted your habit, does it?

Carl Jones
20 May 2008 at 10:54

Claddach; you don`t warrent an answer.

Carl Jones
20 May 2008 at 10:55

Harvey; so you like talking with mad people?lol

Carl Jones
20 May 2008 at 10:55

Can you spot the SIS commentors?LOL

writeon
20 May 2008 at 11:00

Harvey,

I do have some names, but no specific dates. These strories come from my father's mother who talked a bit about the Jewish branch of the family and Vienna and what they supposedly talked and argued about a long time ago.

I'm wary of disclosing too much of my biography or details about my identity online, or anywhere else, because I received some death threats in another context, so I perfer to remain as anonymous as possible. We live in strange times and I'm probably more open than I should be.

I write novels and stories for a living and use lots of different names, and I draw a lot on my family background for inspiration. Getting into a 'role' and 'character' is part of the process of creation, though I do feel a strange affinity and sympathy for the young, Jewish anarchist in Vienna and the glittering, yet fragile and corrupt world he inhabited during the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I'm thinking of writing more about him as he, the idea of him, his ideals, fascinates me.

What also should be the subject for another novel is the strange phenomenon of 'Israel' getting into bed with these weird American Christian-Zionists. These people seem to want to hurry the end of the world along and the rapture, and they think the Holy Land would be a good place to start the final battle between Good and Evil. George Bush seems to be one of them too! Now I just don't see what most Jews in Israel would gain from such a titantic and bloody contest, why can't they choose to start Armageddon somewhere else, what about Kansas? Leave Israel out of the conflagration!

True one can regard these people as mentally deranged, yet when Bush begins to use their rhetoric about the great battle between Good and Evil, perhaps one should take this kind thing seriously. Considering the horror unleashed by the equally crazed ideas of the followers of the mad prophet Adolf Hitler, ideas that in retrospect seem completely nuts, 'Israel' needs to step back and think about who these Christian-Zionists really are and what motivates them. It seems like an awful lot of Jews have to be sacrificed in order to be saved!

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 11:16

Hi Hope,

your 'pinpricks' kill and maim real human beings. And they are issued by an elected government even though Israel vacated its territories.

Israel kills more Palestinians than vice versa, but Palestinians kill as many as they can. The numbers game means nothing.

pmendes
20 May 2008 at 11:18

I find this debate incredibly depressing. it feels like a football match where one has to cheer their team, and boo the other. There was a time when the Left focused on fighting extremism from both sides, and ending war and violence. Where are those who genuinely want to promote israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation?

Dr Philip Mendes

Claddach
20 May 2008 at 11:19

Hi Carl Jones no need to answer. But you must learn to spell. You see if you keep spelling the same words wrong all the time, in the same patterns, and you do. Well? Use any name you like, Carl.

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 11:30

Write On,

you are right in that Jewish nationalism is as open, or vulnerable, to scrutiny as any other Austrian, German or, it goes without say, Palestinian Arab Christian and Muslim.

My problem is when it is held up as more illegitimate than any other nationalism, and 'evil' nationalism versus 'good' Palestinian nationalism. Too many on the 'left' have bought into that manichaean anithesizing.

Also, with regard to Christian Zionists, or Christian pro-Zionists, tarring them all with the same brush is no different, it seems to me, than tarring all Israeli, Zionist or pro-Zionist Jews with the same brush.

For most of Christian history, Christians and Christianity has been profoundly anti-Zionist, holding Jews to have been dispossessed and humiliated for their rejection of Jesus and the prophets, and that that was or is their proper lot in which they are to be maintained. That certainly has characterised Catholic and Orthodox Christianity.

What was different about the Protestant Christianity of North Western Europe, which all came to dominate North America, was that it was sympathetic to Christianity's Jewish roots and to Jews in general, which is why Jews found a home more tolerant than any hithertoo since the destruction of the temple. The other side of that coin was that, as devout Christians, such Protestants allowed, logically, that, if g-d could dispossess Israel for their sins, he might restore them in his mercy and, so, if Jews wished, they might return to the Land.

You may maintain that was wrong, if you wish, but I disagree. It was a just as well as logical deduction.

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 11:33

It also gives the lie to the assertion that sympathy to Zionism is inherently antisemitic: the earliest Christians sympathetic to a Jewish restoration all called for Jews to be permitted to settle in their respective homelands.

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 11:39

The most famous example being Oliver Cromwell whose allowing for a Jewish restoration to the Land was hardly incompatible with his welcoming the Jews to settle in England for the first time in 400 years.

hope
20 May 2008 at 15:19

Zkharya, I know the rockets do sometimes kill, although not very often. When they do it's sad for those involved. But my point was that the constant reiteration of that fact is a kind of distraction, and if people are going bang on what are really quite small numbers, it is at least worthwhile to remind them that the numbers on the other side are in fact somewhat larger. And then hope we can go beyond that kind of number trading to look at the conflict in a broader way.

knave
20 May 2008 at 17:03

As I said at the start isreal is not a racist state and if i was secular arab I would rather live thee than say saudi arabia but I do feel the right wing Brightists and isreali extremists who whitewash the actions of some Isreali politicians and military. Then call anybody who questions some actions of Isreal as anti semitic. Yes I mean you Steve and Bright quite unsettling and undemocratic.

Why Steve is writing a blog brave.

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 17:27

Hope,

you are the one who is number trading: you are saying that the fact that Israelis kill more Palestinians is more significant than the fact that Palestinians kill as many Israelis as they can get.

And a ratio of 1000 Israelis to 5000 Palestinians is not particularly unbalanced in a modern conflict. The west routinely kills in ratios 10-100-1000 to 1 in its favour. Israel could kill in those ratios, but it doesn't.

What you mean by 'broader way' means, I suspect, that Israel or Zionism or whatever must be viewed as the one primarily in the wrong, Palestinians primarily in the right.

I beg to differ. I believe in two states for two peoples with two respective rights of return, division of Jerusalem, new and old etc.

Israel withdrew from Gaza. She should not have to endure any rocket attacks. She certainly is not obliged to supply them with electricity, fuel, food and medicine in return! And the elected government of Gaza ought to be responsible enough not to beg with the one hand while threatening with the other.

Steve M
20 May 2008 at 17:28

Knave, am I the 'Steve' to whom you refer?

I am perfectly capable of accepting that other people might criticize Israel's actions without being anti-Semitic. I question some of Israel's actions myself.

Nevertheless, some who question Israel's actions are indeed anti-Semitic.

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 17:58

Hope,

I might add that in 2000-2001 the P.A. chose war over negotiations. It lost. Why was Israel only obliged to kill one for one? What conflict fought where one side has won has ever had a kill ratio of 1:1?

Hamas professes to be in a state of perpetual jihad against Israel. Why, again, is Israel obliged to kill one for one? Why are Jews obliged to behave with this alleged perfect morality?

redharry
20 May 2008 at 19:33

Martin gets support from Fran Waddams, from a group called Anglican Friends of Israel. Which sounds a lot nicer than it really is.

Here's an interesting speech made by one of their patrons, Professor David Marsland to the pro Apartheid (in South Africa) Springbok Club. It's worth reading for an insight into the mind of one of Israel's staunchest supporters.

http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~springbk/speech5.html

He makes several suggestions, one of which is 'Speak out in support of Israel’s fight against terrorism.'

The rest are:

# Make a formal declaration of war on al-Qa’eda, its associates, its supporters, and those who harbour them.

# Introduce compulsory electronic ID cards, beginning with recent immigrants, asylum seekers, anyone with a criminal record and the unemployed, and extending as quickly as possible to the whole population. Failure to produce an ID on demand to be punishable by six months in prison without appeal.

# Withdraw from and replace the UN, NATO and the EU.

# Withdraw immediately from all international treaties and agreements, including all aspects of so-called international law, which might be used by the enemy to impede national self-defence, including the use of pre-emptive military force.

# Immediately halt all immigration, asylum seeking, and student entry by Arab nationals and other Moslems. Identify, arrest and deport Arab and other Moslem illegals. No appeals to be allowed.

# Halt or segregate air flights into or out of Britain by Arabs.

# Transfer to the defence budget, and to the war against terrorism specifically, all the public expenditure currently squandered by the billions of pounds on welfare for derelicts, no-hopers, unemployables and moral delinquents, on legal assistance for career criminals, and on foreign aid to despotic, incompetent rulers in Africa and other parts of the “Third World”.

# Strengthen surveillance of Moslem communities throughout Britain – with no limitation of targets to self-avowed and known “extremists” (Browne, 2004).

# Strengthen anti-terrorist legislation to allow on suspicion indefinite secret imprisonment (without appeal, without visits and without any privileges), tough interrogation, and where necessary summary execution by authorised agents.

# End the production of official, legal, and other reports and enquiries concerning any aspect of the war on terrorism until the war is won. This will take as much as a decade.

# Speak out in support of Israel’s fight against terrorism.

# In Iraq and other anti-terrorist battle-fields, forget “hearts and minds”. The enemy are heartless and of low mentality. Build up allied and local forces and unleash them mercilessly until the enemy is wiped out.

# Rather than risk rescue, suicide or future political concessions, summarily execute Saddam and his top henchmen immediately.

# Never allow anyone – family, company or country – to pay-off hostage-takers, either in cash or in political concessions. Where hostages can be located within twenty-four hours, effect a military rescue if it can be done safely, otherwise destroy the hostages, the hostage-takers and their retinue by bombing. Where location proves impossible within twenty-four hours, bomb any convenient target associated with the hostage-takers.

# Reduce the need for prisons in Iraq by authorising summary execution of known enemy. Throw journalists, servicemen or anyone else who seek to file lying and negative reports about conditions in terrorist prisons in Iraq or elsewhere into these same prisons for an indefinite term.

# Censor prejudiced and negative reporting of the war against terrorism by British media. Neutralise by military means any Arab media providing a propaganda outlet for terrorists.

# Prepare militarily and politically for the next battle in the war on terrorism, wherever it may occur, by cultivating reliable allies; by enhancing the language capabilities of the armed and secret services; by developing unmanned weaponry; and by investing heavily in intelligence capability.

greene
20 May 2008 at 19:37

"Where are those who genuinely want to promote israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation?"

I suspect beaten down by disappointments from all sides.

Speaking for myself - someone who for years has believed in a two state solution, I no longer believe the Palestinian Arabs currently running the show have any intention or desire to make peace or co exist with Israel or Jews. I believe Israel's restraint or non response in the face of provocation ie rocket attacks - mostly as gestures to the west, have now created a hope in the Arab world that they, Israel is really a paper tiger and is weak and can be beaten.

I believe Ahmadinejad has fueled this notion and I believe the illusion that Hezbollah won in 2006 has only spread this belief.

In my opinion, the west continues to apply a western mindset when formulating ME policy and comes up wrong every time.

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 19:38

Hi Redharry,

thanks for demonstrating definitivelt the fact that you're a nob by quoting from a 20 year old speech from someone who may have met someone who may have met someone who may have met someone who may have written something Martin Bright may have read once.

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 19:41

'sorry, I'm also nob. Everything I wrote above is correct bar the '20 year old' bit.

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 19:45

Anglican friends of Israel. Outrageous. Christians who actually dare to believe other than what most Christians have believed for most of Christian history, that Jews should be kept in a state of dispossession and humiliation!

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 19:55

I would also like to observe that the charge of venality against Martin Bright, of his receiving 'funding', meaning in context, bribes, is a classic antisemitic trope.

The antisemite cannot conceive of anyone's being a Jew- (sorry, Zionist-) lover but because there is something material in it for him.

The fact that non-Jewish Jews such as Levi999 and others indulge in it only goes to show that Jewish antisemitism is as alive as ever.

writeon
20 May 2008 at 21:34

After so much gloom and talk of even more war just around the corner, perhaps a little optimism and a positive perspective is appropriate? Here is the barest outline of a possible peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, an alternative to war, which I regard as a form of collective madness.

In principle Israel and the Palestinians could come to a reasonablel, compromise, accomodation; call it 'peace' if you like. It's not impossible to conceive and is highly desirable compared to the ghastly alternatives that await both peoples down the road if they don't find a way to live side by side and together. Something that isn't as strange as it seems, as there was great deal of cultural affinity between the two semetic peoples, before outsiders got involved in the region.

For example there is the Saudi proposal that if Israel agrees to withdraw to the pre 1967 borders, with suitable adjustments, then Saudi and the other Arab states will recognise Israel and 'peace' will be declared, or words pretty much to that effect. If this deal was implimented, and the Arab states then recognized Israel, it would be difficult for the 'extremists' to justifiy what they regard as their legitimate struggle to retake Palestine from the 'occupying entity'. Iran, for example, would be isolated and hardly able to lead the oposition to Israel if the leading Arab nations agreed a peace deal with Israel that had support from their populations as well.

Saudi is worried sick that the conflict with Israel over Palestine, and how to divide it, is undermining the legitimacy and support for a number of Arab regimes and the entire region is like a tinderbox, waiting for some spark that will set it alight and drag them into the ensuing sea of flames.

The Arab regimes want to make peace with Israel in their own self-interest, because they want to survive, yet the conflict is undermining them the longer it goes on unresolved.

This 'deal' wouldn't be perfect and one could still envisage terror attacks by militants who refuse compromise, but it would have the advantage of being an alternative to more wars, which is where we are heading inexorably if we continue along the current, slippery, path.

Israel would still have a mighty army, an incredible airforce, the 'friendship' of the United States, and all its nuclear weapons, enough to level every Arab city if need be. So where is the risk in withdrawing to something like the 1967 borders?

The Palestinians would have Gaza and most of the West Bank, two chunks of territory, linked by a corridor, which would form the basis of a viable state, viable being an important word, because 'viable' would mean stable. The Palestinians could then concentrate on developing their state and Saudi, the Eu and the Americans could buy their agreement with a massive aide programme, not threats and a seige.

It's too simplistic to label Hamas as just another terrorist organization, they are a lot more than that. It's possible to negotiate with them as well, and even Hezbolah in Lebanon.

Unfortunately for this 'plan' to have a chance certain 'dreams' will have to be put back into the fantasy world where they belong. The Arabs would have to accept that Israel exists and the Jewish state isn't going anywhere, this has, in reality already been accepted de facto by most of the Arab states. Israel would have perhaps a bigger problem accepting such a peace for a number of serious and understandable reasons, but which can be overcome, if one really wants to.

At the core I don't really believe the Nationalist Right in Israel wants 'peace' with the Palestinians. They want total surrender on their terms, an ethnically exclusive state, and dream of Israel as a dominant regional power - a Greater Israel. This is understandable as for so long Israel has been a military giant in a weak and disunited region, but will this situation last for ever? History tells us it won't and then what happens to Israel? Does one really want to base Israel's security on its nuclear arsenal? Would using these weapons in some future war of survival make Israel more 'secure'? Can one really use these terrible weapons and remain a civilized state? Can they be justified morally? Wouldn't one be purchasing one's survival at the price of one's soul? Aren't nuclear weapons really Holocaust weapons?

It means that the West has to find a way to undermine the credibility of the Right in Israel as a way forward towards 'peace', not support them and head for more war. This shouldn't be too difficult, but it does require the will to do it, and the Americans don't have that will or desire. The Right in the United States have plans of their own for the Middle East and its resources and they need to keep the Right in power as a heavily armed bridgehead in the heart of the most valuable region on earth. Here I'm talking about energy resources, the control of which is the ultimate prize, a prize of such collosal importance, it can raise and topple empires.

Sorry, I started out trying to be optimistic and now I've returned to something like pessimism, sorry. But at least we can try to be honest about what's really happening and why, can't we? The ordinary people in the region are being held hostage, duped and killed, by elites who don't really give a damn about them, they are expendable in a conflict which has more to do with wealth and power than we realize. The ordinary people of Israel and Palesitne are being sent out to fight like peasants armies in the Middle Ages for the benefit of their fuedal lords and masters, who think they are the great unwashed and they stink. Nationalsim is the greatest confidence trick ever, because it's replaced the real 'war', the class war!

PS The last bit is a trifle over-simplified, but I'm sure you get my drift.

Zkharya
20 May 2008 at 22:45

The Palestinians' time is running out

By Bradley Burston

Tags: Israel, palestinians, Nakba

For my Palestinian friends, with sadness:

I understand why you long ago came to believe that time was on your side. I understand the many factors, demographic, cultural, historic, geo-political, which have served to reinforce that belief, the strong conviction that Palestinian statehood was inevitable, inalienable - in every sense, a matter of time.

I understand why you have come to believe that the state of Israel is merely the latest in a long series of fleeting colonial episodes, that its roots are elsewhere, its strength is illusory, its endurance eroded, its spirit broken, its future dim. I understand that you believe you can wait these people out, wear them down, outfight them and out-believe them and out-populate them and, in the end, take them over.

I understand that you believe that rockets and mortars from the north, south, east, and, eventually, west, can depopulate and peel back and obliterate the borders of pre-1967 Israel until there will be no need to agree to a Jewish state on those borders, no need to compromise on refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, no need to talk, no need for self-scrutiny and reconsideration, no need to bend.

I understand that you believe that this is your right, religiously, morally, politically. I understand why you believe that you can wait.

But this month, three generations since 1948, since your Nakba, this is what I ask you to consider:

Your time is running out.

If you do not begin to act with all of your wisdom in moving toward statehood, you run the risk of becoming the Kurds of the Mediterranean basin, the Native Americans of the Middle East, permanently stateless, eternally denied.

If you do not begin to rethink the course which the Palestinian national movement has taken, you must begin to consider the idea of a world without a Palestine. The world is beginning to feel more and more comfortable with that possibility, and it is time for you to think hard about the reasons why.

We in the post-modern West have spent years educating ourselves to believe that all cultures are equally valid - with the possible exception, of course, of our own. We have taken it on faith that to criticize the culture of an indigenous people is obscenely imperialist, paternalist.

In short, we gave you a pass. And we encouraged you to give yourselves one. In respecting you for your steadfastness, we refrained from calling you on your passivity. In accepting and amplifying your contentions as to Israel's acts of wrongdoing, we chose not to hold you accountable for your own, or to explain them away as a function of occupation,

You learned, over time, to hold Israel responsible for the whole of your plight. You learned, over time, to ignore, explain away, blame entirely on Israel, or otherwise deny the ways in which your actions and, in particular, your passivity, have deepened and fostered your misery. You learned to excuse your leaders their corruption, and their policy of foiling Israeli and foreign attempts to improve your conditions. You learned to excuse your Arab brothers their duplicity and their lip service and their exploitation and their cold shoulder and their contempt and their consummate failure to come to your aid.

In the process, you may have grown accustomed to a definition of time, and of indigenous peoples, that bears re-examination. There is, first of all, this:

The Jews are an indigenous people here, no less than you.

The Jews have every right to have a nation here, no less than you.

The Jews are stubborn and proud and fundamentally fierce as hell, no less than you.

You have dismissed the Jews as a foreign influence. You have dismissed their history, waved away their blood and sinew tie to Jerusalem, acted as though they have no business here but evil.

But in the decades you have spent misleading yourself about the true nature of the culture and the origins of the Jews, generation upon generation of Jews has been born here. They are natives. They are not going anywhere. And even the leftists among them are willing to die in defense of staying on this soil.

Worse, perhaps, is the way in which you took deadly aim at the concept of land for peace, and destroyed it, perhaps for all time. Your artful justifications of using Gaza settlement ruins for Qassam launchers wash with no one. You have justified every last claim and prediction of the Israeli right. You have lost immeasurable international support. You are looked upon abroad as Polarized to the heart, paralyzed by internal strife, and unable to arrive at, abide by, or implement decisions.

Your unfortunate ally Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rising to your defense, marked the anniversary by telling you that Israel "has reached the end like a dead rat after being slapped by the Lebanese" and tha "Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken."

Your unfortunate ally Osama Bin Laden told you last week that Israel's 60th anniversary was "evidence that Palestine is our land, and the Israelis are invaders and occupiers who should be fought."

"We will continue, God permitting, the fight against the Israelis and their allies ... and will not give up a single inch of Palestine as long as there is one true Muslim on earth."

What your unfortunate allies are saying is that it is more important to eliminate the Jewish state than it is to create a Palestinian one.

For this entire decade, the Palestinian national movement has acted accordingly. At the same time, it has effectively done the bidding of the Israeli right, doing everything in its power to raise the status of the settlers from an unruly, unfocused, marginalized, declining entity to that of a prophetic force.

Thanks in no small part to you, the settlement movement is flourishing as never before, confident that your rockets and your rhetoric will see to it that, as the years and generations pass, the settlers will come to be seen as, yes, indigenous.

The settlers will never be able to repay their debt to you.

You may have noted that in the wake of the second intifada, hundreds of suicide bombings in Israel's main cities, and thousands of Qassams, mortar shells and Katyushas, the Israeli left is furious with you, the Israeli center wants never to hear from you again, and only the Israeli right is delighted with the decisions you have made and the actions you have undertaken.

You made conclude from this that the left were untrustworthy to begin with and all Israelis are the same.

Or you might think twice.

True, Israel was once isolated, stigmatized, universally condemned, boycotted. But your actions, and those of Bin Laden and Iran, have effectively welcomed Israel into the good graces of a range of countries which have begun to think twice about you. And have ceased to care about you. No country in the world - Israel included - has cried wolf more often in the past than you have. Now, when your distress is truly worse than ever, the cry has fallen on deaf - or hostile - ears.

We in the media coddled you, supported you, cast you as the noble underdog. In response, you decided that the Jews control the media, take Israel's side, slander the cause of Palestine.

Look again.

Your celebration of terror has alienated many of your closest friends.

You did this. You. No one else. You have convinced exactly those Israelis who were willing to trade the West Bank for peace, that this would be a literally fatal error.

Last month, as if to remove the remainder of doubt, the veteran Palestinian Authority Representative in Lebanon, Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, told a Lebanese television station, "Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine."

You owe your children more than this. You owe your children more than pipedreams, nightmares, threats and delusions. You owe them more than victim status. You owe your children, and theirs, more than a culture of failure and passivity and graft and violence and loss. You owe your children and theirs - and ours - an honest search for peace.

Or would you rather that I simply shut up? Just the rantings of another untrustworthy Jew? Still want to believe you did everything right? Still want to believe that your few friend remaining in the Western left are more than just powerless cranks? Still want to believe that if you hold out long enough, everything will come your way?

As you wish.

I invite you to compare notes with the Native American.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/985341.html

Harvey
20 May 2008 at 23:06

Write on

Are you entirely sure that Jewish branch of your Austrian ancestry 100 years ago is not just the product of a fertile and somewhat fevered imagination.After all ,as you state you do write novels and stories for a living and getting into role and character is part of the creative process . Perhaps the boundary between fantasy and reality has become a little blurred.

Nevertheless I would welcome the opportunity of playing the part of a young Sigmund Freud who lived in Vienna around that time .I believe I am well qualified!

Steve M
21 May 2008 at 00:35

Zkharya,

That's a powerful piece by Bradley Burston. Do you think it's true (that the Palestinians' time is running out)?

Recently I've been wondering whether the year 2048 will mark a turning point. This will mark 100 years since the founding of the State of Israel and an important psychological barrier. I think that Mr. Burston believes that the Palestinians' time will 'run out' sometime before that.

Carl Jones
21 May 2008 at 01:37

Steve M; yes, time is running out. Its called genocide.

Claddach
21 May 2008 at 08:28

I don't usually slum on Left leaning blogs and the comments posted here are the reason why. If these are representative of the level of debate on the Left, Martin Bright should pack up his blog and move out right now. There's not so much "a terrible fault line on the British left." as there is an anti-Semitic psychosis. Mix this in with paranoid ramblings, historic revisionism and outright craziness and you have a stew that Der Sturmer would have been proud to serve. Martin, get out now while you can.

Serosch
21 May 2008 at 08:54

Yes Martin, get out while you can and go join your chums Cohen and Phillips at the Zionist Daily aka the Evening Stnadard.

David Rose
21 May 2008 at 20:51

This thread only serves to demonstrate what's wrong with the whole idea of anonymous internet postings. I don't agree with everything in Martin's article. But when some of the debate around sinks to the level of some of the postings here, it seems to me that this is a medium that has simply become futile.

writeon
22 May 2008 at 07:00

Zkharya,

Thanks for posting the peice from Burston. It was articulate and well-argued, and I agree with much or most of of what he says. I'm not sure about his assumptions though, or his conclusions, but the bits imbetween are thought-provoking.

It is though a lucid and sophisticated form of the argument tha the Palestinians are their own worst enemy, which may or may not be true. That their unwillingness to face reality is a dangerous illusion.

I think it's interesting and telling that Burston compares the Palestinians to the Native American 'Indians' and that the Palesinians risk repeating their historic fate, that time is running out for them too.

Couldn't one substitute the word 'Indians' in Burston's article as a thought experiment? Replacing the word 'Palestinian'. Given what we know about the history of the conquest of the Americas and the treatment of the 'Indians' by the advancing Whiteman shouldn't one perhaps be a little circumspect in comparing the fate and plight of the Palestinians with the Native Americans? I mean comparing the was the West has dealt with the 'Indians' is hardly an advertisement for Western values, is it? Didn't we invade and steal the Indians land, didn't we massacre them, didn't we herd them into reservations, didn't we systematically attempt to destroy their culture? Didn't we call them savages and murderers when they attempted to resist and fight back? Wasn't the destruction of the Indian way of life a form of genocide?

Perhaps Burston should compare the fate of the Native Americans with the Palestinians after all?

Carl Jones
22 May 2008 at 08:31

David Rose, I comment under my own name. I m not hiding like the SIS and Jewish lobby. Save ORDINARY Jews from abuse.

David Rose
22 May 2008 at 09:36

You might do, Carl. Many don't. A proposal for the new NS editor: to close down all forums/comments to anonymous posters. Why would anyone want to hide thier identity?

Martin Bright
22 May 2008 at 12:17

Anonymous postings are indeed an issue. Can anyone think of a good reason not to follow David's advice? I suppose the difficulty of verifying someone's "real" name.

Zkharya
22 May 2008 at 12:53

Writeon,

a) Israeli Jews are returning to a land of which, historically, even Palestinian Christians and Muslims have believed they were dispossessed.

b) they are not like Europeans in America

c) the Native Americans were not given the chance for their own state in half of America.

d) Palestinian Christians and Muslims thought it more important to deny Jews a state than acquire one themselves. Too many still think that way, says Burston.

e) Palestinian Jews committed ethnic cleansing, sure; Palestinian and other Arab Muslims threatened the same against Jews, or worse.

f) one may ethnically cleanse lest one be ethnically cleansed.

e) if one is faced with an implacable enemy who vows he will never cease to find ways to destroy you, it logically follows that one may have to destroy him first.

I do not think that is Burston's point, but, I think, the logic is valid, nonetheless.

Those who complain of the possibility of Israel's committing genocide conveniently overlook the fact that her enemies' are quite often openly genocidal in their discourse and threats.

The Nazi comparison doesn't work, because Berlin Jews never blew themselves up in Berlin cafes, or sought to deny Germans Germany, or set up a Judea in its stead. Au contraire, they strove to be as loyal citizens as possible.

Zkharya
22 May 2008 at 12:56

Thanks for your considered and detailed reply, BTW, Writeon, you are a lucid and cogent writer yourself. 'sorry if mine are not up to the same standard.

Zkharya
22 May 2008 at 13:09

Also, Zionist Jews didn't invade Palestine. They settled by and large perfectly peacefully. They didn't steal land, they bought it. Even when Jews were tiny in number, Palestinian Christians and Muslims sought to exclude them, even when fleeing genocide. The Palestinian sought to destroy the Jews in 1936-39. They failed, but they did succeed in effectively cancelling the Balfour Declaration. Their leadership then continued its preexisting alliance with Nazi Germany by promulgating Nazi policies, from Berlin, in Arabic broadcasts, for Jews in Europe, Palestine and the Arab world.

They then rejected partition and sought the annihilate the Jews again. There is evidence they Palestinian leadership continued to call for the persuction of the Jews of the Arab world, and that this contributed to their being effectively driven out, mostly to Israel.

This is not the situation of Native Americans and Europeans. When the earliest Palestinian nationalists sought to express their fears of dispossession they expressed it in terms of becoming, in their turn, Jews, the new dispossessed of the earth. As Christians and Muslims they knew Jews had suffered a dispossession from the land that subsequently became Palestine, and from just about every where else afterwards. But they still sought to exclude Jews, even those seeking refuge from persecution, then sided with the persecutors themselves. That is why such as Hamas has only now been able to acknowledge the historicity of the holocaust, and that only fitfully and largely for western, rather than domestic audience.

David Rose
22 May 2008 at 13:19

To Martin: Of course if people really try, they can hide their identiy. But if registration required stating a real name and address, it would at least make it harder, and also clear that debates here should be conducted on a "real name" basis. Myself, I think the same principle should be followed on other popular sites, such as the Guardian's. The gratuitous abuse quotient might just diminish.

Claddach
22 May 2008 at 13:26

Martin there are many blogs which do not allow anonymous posting. I post regularly under my real name. at O'Reilly's XML.COM and one or two other political and technical blogs. Verifying a poster's real name is something that eventually sorts itself out. It's obvious looking at the level of discussion on this blog why one would wish for anonymity. Give real names a chance. The alternative is to continue with this unfortunate, unfunny joke.

Zkharya
22 May 2008 at 15:27

Hi Claddach, are ye the only Yiddishe Scotsman in the Irish fusiliers?

My full name is Zachary Cormac Esterson, and me mam's from Cork City.

Jak C
22 May 2008 at 17:27

Fantastic. There is nothing left wing about supporting terror and the destruction of a Jewish state. It is about time the left rediscovered what it believed in once upon a time - democracy, equality and social justice. Its great that the New Statesman is opening up the debate, and letting everyone know that you can be left wing and support Israel.

neman
22 May 2008 at 17:30

David why are you trying to exclude people from posting their views? If you have something constructive to say, well, say it. You may not like some of the comments, while I would let others decide what comments they find informative, well argued, or cogent.

georges
24 May 2008 at 15:06

WHAT ISRAEL MEANS TO ME.

I see Israel as an aspect of more general "Jewishness" and

shall try to draft their respective impact on my life.

I was brought up in the cosmopolitan context of the Warsaw

intelligentsia, as the son of a German refugee. I vaguely

knew my Jewish origin, but religion and nationality had

little importance for us.

Amid this peaceful context, the encounter with Jewishness

came like a thunder from the blue sky: Nazis occupied Poland

and we were sent to the ghetto. The horror, in the face of

brutal terror, turned soon into revolt. Having escaped from

the ghetto I joined the Polish Resistance, the AK. Due to my

proficiency in German I was assigned as liaison agent to the

Gestapo penetration service, commanded by Captain Danuta.

I applied also for missions of liaison with the ZOB (Jewish

Fighting Organization) in the ghetto. In that role I joined

The Upraising, which coincided with the Passion Week 1943.

My memories in literary form ("Passion Week") are registered

in Yad Vashem.

So much for my encounter with Jewishness. Israel, in the

sense of "Eretz Yisrael", turned up for me after the war,

through meeting other survivors, mostly adherents of

HaShomer HaTzair, preparing to join kibbutzim and Zahal.

We saw Israel as a safe harbor for Jews, as an ideal in

which "Jew" had little to do with religion and meant mainly

"the oppressed". Enthusiastic about the creation of

Israel, we were deeply disappointed by its religious order,

by its biblical justification, by the Law of Return founded

in the halakhic definition of Jew. We dreamed about a secular

country, sheltering of course religious Jews, but open to

anybody sharing Jewish culture or fate. We saw the halakhic

rule as an affront to our secular Weltanschauung and as

outrageous injustice to "Goim" who trained with us in view

of migrating for moral reasons to Israel, some being former

AK liaison agents who had themselves fought in the Uprising.

Most of us were simple youngsters without much intellectual

upbringing, but we saw the halakhic definition of "Jew" as

an insult to common sense.

(Indeed, Halakha defines a Jew as the offspring of a Jewish

mother. However, in order to ascertain that his mother was

Jewish, he would have to prove that in turn, her mother, her

grandmother, etc. were Jewish. A glaring vicious circle

making motherhood-based Jewishness a logical nonsense. The

marginal entry to the cycle, viz. the conversion, is no better:

the converting rabbi must clearly be Jewish, but he cannot

prove it either and may only spin in the same vicious circle.)

Thus, by the halakhic definition itself there ain't no sich

animal as a "Jew". Halakhic "Jew" is an irrational, dogmatic

phantasm. And yet, the fact remains that millions of Jews

have been exterminated.

Phantasms versus Facts. I have fully grasped this dichotomy

much later, working on foundations of Relativity with

Einstein's team.

Einstein believed that a new reason is essential if mankind

is to survive and that blunders cannot be remedied by the

same reason that created them. Established reason, with its

nationalist and religious phantasms and the jungle "freedom",

ended up necessarily at Auschwitz. Thus, an Auschwitz-free,

humane world may only be conceived in terms of a new reason

banning irrational dogma and accepting only factually

verifiable, rational ideas. On the face of it, religions,

with their dogmatic, unverifiable phantasms, should be

disregarded.

Yet, however irrational their dogma, religions are obviously

social facts. Thus, an enlightened country should accommodate

religions while refusing to be in any way ruled by their

dogma and rigorously restricting laws to rationality.

Individual beliefs, however delusory, should be respected as

long as they don't infringe upon the law.

The Halutzim dream of Israel was clear: a shelter for the

oppressed; rational, but tolerant towards irrational beliefs;

peaceful, but unyielding to danger; pragmatic towards the

"free" economy, but unselfish, incorruptible, and supportive

of kibbutzim trying to break with the jungle.

Did this dream come true or, as some people say, has it

turned into a nightmare?

I can only speak for myself.

My Alyah was delayed due to my critically ill father. I came

just after the 6 days war, amid the enthusiasm of having

conquered the Great Israel, the Golden Yerushalaim and the

Snows of Hermon. My HaShomer HaTzair view saw it as a chance

to share with Arabs modern agronomy, technology, democracy

and welfare and to build together the most humane country,

a model for the world.

I was of course aware of another view, that of orthodox rabbis,

for whom the Great Israel was Yahve's present to Moses, in

whose name they were ready to run it and to cash in the profits.

But I saw Israelis as predominantly secular workers and

soldiers, while the devotees with their funny hats seemed

to me derisory and impossible to be taken seriously.

The first anticlimax was sparked by the "street of injustice".

I came across it visiting friends in a Haifa suburb. Its one

side consisted of new residential houses flanked by posh

Mercedes and Volvos. They were inhabited by Olim Hadashim

(new arrivals) profiteering from immigration-boosting

packages. Most of them in this street were thugs or gangsters

escaped from the Soviets on false halakhic certificates

signed by corrupted rabbis.

The other side of the street comprised decrepit shacks in

which vegetated below poverty level old, pre-48 immigrants

from Turkey or Iran. They had no right to any packages, only

to fight in Haganah or in the IDF and, if invalids, to get

$10 monthly pensions. None could dream to ever have even the

cheapest car. The shiny limousines from the opposite side

were like a slap in the face.

Thus, my first disappointment concerned internal injustice

flying in the face of my dream of a model country. Religious

problems of various gravity followed shortly. Compulsory

kashrut was a nuisance, even if a bearable one. The

prohibition of public transportation on Shabbat was more

annoying. Chains blocking roads in religious quarters were

revolting: they barred emergency vehicles and caused serious

accidents such as that of a soldier decapitated in his jeep.

And sacrificing Israel's security for silly rituals seemed

simply abhorrent: At the moment of writing these lines Israel

faces existential risks and the government needing stability

to deal with them may be overturned over the "problem" of

selling bread during Passover!

Finally, the Yom Kippur trauma. The outrageous laxness,

conceit and corruption of idolized leaders who nearly lost

the war and annihilated Israel. And even worse: the apathy

following our protest sparked by Motti Ashkenazi, the chronic

apathy of Israelis. Olmert bungled the Lebanon war as Dayan

the Yom Kippur and protests yielded alike to apathy, leaving

the bungler at the helm in face of existential threats.

Apathy which I never accepted and endeavor to overcome with

our protest motto "Ichpat Li" - "I Do Care".

Yet, disappointments found compensations. Solidarity bridged,

in my IDF unit, the secular-religious gap. The company

counted several religious Yemenis, gentle, helpful and

appreciated as best craftsmen one has ever seen. It visibly

disturbed them to drive army vehicles on Shabbat, even if

they did not refuse to do so. All secular soldiers proposed

to swap their weekday duties against Yemenis' Shabbat ones,

even when that could mean a lost Shabbat leave.

Yom Kippur trauma got abundant compensation, when the war,

as good as lost by corrupted leaders, was unprecedentedly

turned to victory by bottom-up initiative and determination.

My participation in this "war of captains" was the most

exalting experience of my life. It felt as if the Warsaw

Ghetto Uprising had crushed Nazi Germany.

Yom Kippur has unfolded for me another aspect of Israel:

its humanity. I got a leave for treatment of a hand wound

in Haifa hospital. Like all civil hospitals at the time,

it was overrun by wounded Arab POWs. Entering the hospital

you were leaving your religion, nationality etc. outside,

becoming just a patient. My case being benign, I slept on

a mattress in the corridor among lightly-wounded Israelis,

some of them high ranking officers. Comfortable rooms

accommodated more serious cases, mostly the POWs.

I can hardly imagine such a situation in any other country.

I believe this reasonably depicts "What Israel means to me":

A crucial determinant of my outlook on life.

A dream that came true a bit shattered internally and

externally besieged like the Ghetto.

Thus a challenge and a ceaseless commitment.

waterdragon
02 June 2008 at 21:07

Martin:

Two points. Had the Arabs accepted Abba Eban's promptly tendered offer of land for peace, there would have been no "colonization" by Israel of the lands now called the "occupied territories". I also wonder if you were made aware during your visit to Sderot, that it is popuplated by Jews who fled "Arab" countries, not Europe, and that up until the Soviet Union's demise, Mizrahi Jews outnumbered Ashkenazim.

Martin Bright
04 June 2008 at 12:07

georges

What an extraordinary posting yours is. Could you please contact me at the magazine?

martin@newstatesman.co.uk

gondwanaland
19 June 2008 at 11:12

redharry

Thanks for pointing out who bankrolls Bright's brand of "journalism".

It's extraordinary that writers from The New Statesman have thrown their lot in with Israeli arms dealers to push the nascent Iran war and heap more scorn upon the Palestinian victims.

Bright should be ashamed of himself for writing such garbage.

On a lighter note, It's so rare to read anything remotely positive about the ME, but this strikes me as a facsinating idea.

http://www.is-peace.org/wnDispPage.asp?Item=433