Israel’s ambassador to the UK lays out a powerful home truth in the Guardian
Israeli ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor, today has a piece in the Guardian setting out a simple but unassailable truth about the conflict in the Middle East: The key to peace is a recognition on the part of Israel’s enemies that Israel is the rightful homeland of the Jewish people.
“Jews have been indigenous to Israel for 3,000 years,” he writes. “Before 1948 the only independent sovereign state there had been the ancient Jewish kingdoms. Centuries of foreign imperial occupation followed, by Romans, the Muslim conquest, Crusaders, the Ottoman empire and the British mandate. It is fitting that as the colonial era drew to a close, Israel’s original inhabitants restored their independence.”
And so it is. Indeed, it is such a powerful message that I am surprised Israeli diplomats are not required to repeat this sort of thing as a mantra in front of the local press, morning, noon and night. For of all the most damaging pieces of ignorance surrounding Israel in Britain and Europe the notion that the Jews are imposters in the Middle East is surely the most dangerous and damaging.
If the core legitimacy of the state is neither accepted nor understood, how can that state’s right to defend itself be accepted and understood? If Jerusalem is someone else’s city, what are the Jews doing there at all, let alone building there? The list goes on.
“Israel is not a temporary inconvenience to be demonised, destroyed or wished away, but the independent, legitimate and permanent nation state of the Jewish people,” says Ambassador Prosor.
Of course it is. And it is particularly well said for having been said in the Guardian.
Tags: Israel
April 20th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Could it be that the argument with Obama is more to do with stopping Israel from attacking iran rather than jerusalem municipal housing?
April 21st, 2010 at 6:39 am
Another step in the right direction from the Guardianistas : Mr Prosor’s article provides a clear message and a challenge : acceptance is the precursor to peace, or at least to a modus vivendi.
Blaming Israel for ‘being there’ provides a convenient excuse for its many enemies not to tackle their own growing domestic problems.
April 21st, 2010 at 1:06 pm
For all those who maintain that Palestine had always been part of Arabia and that there had always been a distinct indigenous population of Palestinians would do well to read Saul S Friedman’s 1982 opus called ” The Land of Dust – Palestine at the turn of the Century”. It is important to realise that many of the sources are primary and written by people who had no personal axe to grind.
I have copied and pasted Alyssen Lappen’s excellent review below from the US Amazon site.
” 4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Superb, well-documented history, August 16, 2008
By Alyssa A. Lappen
This review is from: Land of Dust (Paperback)
The University Press of America did us a great service in 1982 when it published Saul S. Friedman’s excellent 248-page history of “Palestine” as another millennium turned into the 19th century.
In the opening chapter, Friedman recounts the claims of Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat on Nov. 13, 2974, when he was given the “extraordinary privilege of addressing the 29th Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” and firmly debunks each one.
But mostly, he focuses on the fact that in 1906, Ottoman Turks considered “Filastin” (there is no ‘p’ in Arabic) “part of Syria,” and consisting of “several administrative districts, including the Vilayet of Beirut. Palestine was “only southern Syria until the British and French forced a different view upon them after World War I.”
Historically, however, if one included “all territories held by the ancient Israelite tribes within the bounds of Palestine, we would have to add at least half of present day Jordan, for the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh dominated the Waters of Merom (Luke Huleh) to the Mountains of Moab.” Indeed, the Jordan River “flowed through Palestine, and did not serve as a boundary.”
The 12th to 7th century B.C.E. Philistines, moreover, from whom Israel’s Roman conquerors took the name “Palestine” were known as the Pulesti and according to tradition had migrated from “Caphtor,” with dress and culture identifying them “with the declining civilization of Crete.” They were almost certainly “the Sea Peoples” who Ramses VI defeated in Egypt’s Nile delta. Afterward, they settled in Ashdod, Ekron, Gath, Gaza and Ashkelon.
But they never “established hegemony,” since they arrived “significantly after the Israelites….” For more than 1,000 years, in fact, the inhabitants of what was called Palestine in 1900 called it “Israel, Samaria, Judea, Avar Naharin or the Yahud.” The area was no officially renamed “Palestine” until 132 to 135, after the birth of Jesus, or the Common Era.
Of the Saudis, Jordanians and Palestinians tracing their ancestry to Mohammed, Friedman reports, Philip Hitti wrote that the Arabian genealogist and historian “had a horror vacui, and his fancy had no difficulty bridging gaps and filling vacancies” which thus succeeded in most often creating “a continunous record from Adam, or in more modest compassion, from Ishmael and Abraham.”
In any case, the idea of a harmonious indigenous people in what today constitutes Israel looks absurd considering the number of conquests in that area over the centuries.
Besides Amorites, Phoenicains, Aramaeans and Philistines, there were also Assyrians, Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Tulunid Egyptians, Fatamids (including Berber, Slav and Kurdish mercenaries), Persians again in the 12th century C.E. under Saladin, the Mongol hoards of Hugalu Khan’s and Tamerlane from 1260 through 1400, followed by the Yurate Tatars (from the Euphrates), Moulai Mongols, Mamelukes leading legions of Georgian, Circassian and
Turkomen mercenaries, not to mention the Seljuks and the Christian Crusaders.
Citing Finnish anthropologist Hilma Grandquist, Friedman notes that in the 1820s, Irtas villages near Bethlehem were settled by peoples east of the Jordan, and the Negev tribes include Mararba from Libya and Sudanese imported into the region as slaves. In addition 10,000 landless felahin moved from Egypt to Acre and Jaffa in 1829, a point supported by Anthony Nutting who reports that in the 1830s, “numbers of Beduin moved to Palestine to avoid paying the Pasha’s (Mehemet Ali) extortionate levies.” Other Egyptian soldiers moved to Nablus and Beisan around the same time.
Fred Gottheil of the University of Illinois found that between 1922 and 1931, 60,000 Arabs came to what is now Israel from nearby lands, but other scholars indicate the number of Arab immigrants into Israel in the 1920s and 1930s was perhaps as high as 250,000. Their ranks were increased significantly after World War II, moreover, “by carpetbaggers and adventurers” who “flocked to the standard of the Grand Mufti’s [Haj Amin al Husseini] Arab Liberation Army.” Anthropoligsts in 1948 identified them as Bosnians, Kalmucks, Kharmazians, Ethiopians, Druze, and even Armenian, Maronite and Romany Christians.
Arabs owned only one fifth of the land when the United Nations voted to partition Palestine.
Moreover, the Jewish people, among this mass of mostly Muslim Arab, Syrian, North African, Caucasus and Central Asian immigrants, the Jewish people were “not, as Arafat would have us believe, an insignificant trifle.” As early as 1844, Jews comprised 47% of Jerusalem’s population of 15,000, for example, and by 1905, the Jewish people constituted two thirds of a population that had quadrupled in 61 years, to 60,000.
Animosity against the Jewish people, moreover, was rampant. Even in 1882, Jews were regularly debased as “awlad al-mawt” (children of death), “shayatin” (devils), or “siknag,” a derogatory slang word equivalent to “kike.”
In short, antisemitism in “Palestine” then related in no way whatever to the formation of Israel as a Jewish state. It was hatred of Jews, pure and simple. And the fact that these derogatory terms exist in the historical record does indeed testify to the continued Jewish population.
Please note: This book was published in 1982, and makes no mention (lest anyone suggest otherwise) of Joan Peters or Shmuel Katz. Indeed, a high percentage of the citations refer to primary documents.
Moreover, the book contains roughly 90 circa 1905 photographs, further showing that Palestine at that juncture was indeed a land of dust, virtually bereft of bounteous crops, cities, large or populous villages, or multitudes of homes or buildings.
This book is a fabulous piece of scholarship and belongs in every library concerning the Middle East. ”
This book deserves wider readership.
April 22nd, 2010 at 3:36 pm
@eddie
I agree with your view about Iran, but I think that it is also about restructuring the alliance against Iran. Support from other Middle East countries against Iran can be consolidated more easily, Obama thinks, by cooling off the relationship with Israel, much in a similar way Papa Bush tried (and succeeded to a point ) to do with Arab States against Iraq in the first Gulf War. Israel was kept out of the “inner circle” at that time notwithstanding Sadaam’s threats and usage of Scuds against Israel.
April 22nd, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Another Joshua:
Thanks for the book review. I will have to see if I can get a copy.
April 22nd, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Israel, having historical roots in the region going back for millennia, having been recognised and admitted to the UN by a democratic vote in the General Assembly, having fought for its survival at birth, and having defended itself from hostile neighbours throughout its life, can claim to be a more authentic nation than most.
April 23rd, 2010 at 12:33 am
Reading some of those comments makes one realise just how big a problem anti-semitism is today!
Some of those comments are down right disgusting!
Mailman
April 23rd, 2010 at 8:05 pm
The Islamic-Supremacist current regime of Iran is supported by, and sustained entirely by, trade with, including, importantly, petroleum refinement trade with, and natural gas refinement trade with, European companies, especially German and Austrian companies.
Officials of the governments of the countries of Europe, and the authoritarian unelected officials of the authoritarian, totalitarian, Soviet-originated European Union, allow this immoral avaricious support and sustainment of the current regime of Iran by European companies because of the bigoted views that are held about, and because of the malice that is felt toward, the country of the Jewish people by those officials and by the majority of the people in Europe because of, most influentially, the indoctrination, most influentially by bigoted, craven, immoral European and Western journalists, of people in Europe in lies that vilify the country of the Jewish people, and in lies that obfuscate the nature of, and the existence of, the situation that Israel is in, and in lies that obfuscate the nature of, and the existence of, the global modern Islamic-Supremacist political movement.
The support and sustainment, by Europe, of the Islamic-Supremacist current regime of Iran must end.
April 23rd, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Correction:
“…in lies that…”
“…with lies that…”
April 23rd, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Actual disabling sanctions must actually be imposed against the Islamic-Supremacist current regime of Iran.
April 23rd, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Articles by Iranian American Amil Imani
http://www.amilimani.com/
April 23rd, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Articles by Arab Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh
http://www.hudsonny.org/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1&id=22
April 23rd, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Articles by Matthias Küntzel, including articles about the vigorous ongoing trade relationship between Germany and the Islamic-Supremacist current regime of Iran.
http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/kategorie/english/?lang=en
April 23rd, 2010 at 10:13 pm
“Time to act”, conference held in Berlin by the organization Mideast Freedom forum, November 2009 (most talks are in German)
http://www.mideastfreedomforum.org/node/129
April 23rd, 2010 at 10:13 pm
“Business as usual?”, conference held in Berlin by the organization Mideast Freedom forum, May 2008 (talks are in English and German and all talks have English and German audio translations)
http://www.mideastfreedomforum.org/de/node/63
April 23rd, 2010 at 10:17 pm
“Liberal Pacifism VS Islamic Extremism”, by Amil Imani, March 2, 2010
“…Our Western liberals who actively aid and support evil regimes are in fact “Useful Idiots” and their strange but pleased Islamist bedfellows use them as pawns. In the recent past it was the socialist evils of Nazism and Communism that also used Muslim hatred to further their goals. Apparently evil wears many masks…”
“Jews as Scapegoats”, by Amil Imani, March 22, 2010
“…We, free Iranians, express our deepest sympathy to the Jewish people for what they have suffered and have been used as scapegoats throughout history. We also condemn, in the strongest terms, the new coalition of fascists that is brewing under the disgusting and dangerous banner of Islamofascisim.”
“Will America Survive Islamofascisim?”, by Amil Imani, April 1,2010
“…While President Obama glorifies Islam, the barbarians have made it inside our fortress. They have infiltrated our system of government. This time around, the people of the sword have their collaborator, Useful Idiots, inside busily doing all they can to dismantle our republic and replace it with the tyrannical Islamofascisim by appeasing our enemy.”
“Iran, Islam & Cyrus the Great”, by Amil Imani, April 19, 2010
“…With respect to Israel, I have always said that the Israelis shouldn’t be trigger happy. If the hawks in Israel succeed in convincing the government to attack Iran’s facilities, it would be an answered prayer for the mullahs. My advice: Don’t do it. Don’t even think of doing it. Use all your power and influence to get the U.S. and its allies to move with serious extensive, crippling and immediate sanctions, in conjunction with counterrevolution, even if the duplicitous Russians and the conniving Chinese refuse to sign up in the effort. The slap-on-the-wrist type of sanctions is almost as bad as a military attack. It would give the mullahs more time to pursue their dream weapon…”
Articles by Arab Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh
http://www.hudsonny.org/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1&id=22
”
The Palestinians: Why Salam Fayyad Cannot Deliver
04/20/2010
The Palestinians: What Is Needed For Peace
04/08/2010
Middle East: Are Europeans Thwarting Normalization?
03/30/2010
What About The Arab Apartheid? Part II
03/23/2010
What About The Arab Apartheid?
03/16/2010
For Israel’s Arabs It Is Not Apartheid
03/09/2010
Palestinian Authority: Direct the Heat Toward Israel
03/02/2010
“Fatahgate”
02/16/2010
Palestinians: The New Peace Talks, What Fatah Can Deliver
02/09/2010
Palestinian Authority: Where the Money Ends Up
02/02/2010
What Drives Arabs to Hamas and Al-Qaeda?
01/19/2010
Arab Dictators: Why Are They Hiding the Newest Truth?
01/12/2010
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”
April 27th, 2010 at 9:57 am
The key to the Arabs conflict with Israel as follows:
Surah 2:216
Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, ye know not.
Surah 3:85
And whoso seeketh as religion other than the Surrender (to Allah) it will not be accepted from him, and he will be a loser in the Hereafter.
Surah 9:29
Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture (i.e. Jews and Christians) as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.
Surah 9:33
He it is Who hath sent His messenger with the guidance and the Religion of Truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religion, however much the idolaters may be averse.
Surah: 9:123
O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty (unto Him).
Sahih Al Bukhari: Volume 004, Book 052, Hadith Number 220:
Narated By Abu Huraira : Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest
meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping,
the keys of the treasures of the world were brought to me and put in my hand.” Abu Huraira added: Allah’s Apostle
has left the world and now you, people, are bringing out those treasures (i.e. the Prophet did not benefit by them).
April 29th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
“Jews have been indigenous to Israel for 3,000 years,”
And they hve been indigenous to many other places on the globe. Judaism the religion began in the levant, its intellectually dishonest to claim world jewry are descended from there.
“Before 1948 the only independent sovereign state there had been the ancient Jewish kingdoms. Centuries of foreign imperial occupation followed, by Romans, the Muslim conquest, Crusaders, the Ottoman empire and the British mandate. It is fitting that as the colonial era drew to a close, Israel’s original inhabitants restored their independence.”
Hang on, his claim seeks to treat the bile as a history book. Unfortunately for him science and little things like archeology demonstrate that these great jewish kingdoms were little more than city states. And also he claims jews were the original inhabitants???? Wrong yet again, that land was inhabited long before Abraham or Moses. Sure even the Israelites claimed they conquered the land from the indigenous people inhabiting it !!!
the notion that the Jews are imposters in the Middle East is surely the most dangerous and damaging.
Who claimed jews are imposters? Judaism as a religion certainly descended from the levant, but you are aware of the history of proselyzim and conversion which judaism has are you not? Hell need we even mention the khazars? The problem lies in people believing world jewry have a right to own the land of others simply because their religion pre-dates that of the current indigneous peoples. Explain why you support that logic Robin please?
Also would you care to explain why it is you think no jews converted to Islam or christianity? Indeed I’d love to hear how you think christianity spread without jewish converts?
I realise you will not post this comment Mr Shepherd, because Israeli apologists have an aversion to pritnitng the truth, and indeed seem loathe to try and explain their own self-defeating logic !
April 29th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
“Moreover, the book contains roughly 90 circa 1905 photographs, further showing that Palestine at that juncture was indeed a land of dust, virtually bereft of bounteous crops, cities, large or populous villages, or multitudes of homes or buildings.”
You are aware are you not that it is possible in this day and age to stand in thousands of places acrosss Israel and take pictures and you would see nothing but rocky hills and sandy dunes.
One of the few decent zionists, Ahad Ha’am (cultural zionist) put this fallacy of desolate and wasteland palestine to bed when writing in 1891 he admitted
“We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed ….. But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains …. are not cultivated.”
How do you think the Ottoman’s were able to aquire the taxes from the provence of Palestine if it was an uninhabited wasteland?
Furthermore you must jump in your time machine and go back and correct english clergyman HB Tristram when he was writing in the mid 1800′s about his travels to Palestine and his view of the wonderful sight of Jabul Nablus
‘Its beauty can hardly be exaggerated…Clusters of white-roofed houses nestling in the bosom of a mass of trees, olive,palm, orange, apricot, and many another varying the carpet with every shade of gree…Everything fresh, green, soft, and picturesque, with verdure, shade, and water everywhere…a rich blue haze from the many springs and steamlets, which mellows every hard ouline..’
Arabs owned only one fifth of the land when the United Nations voted to partition Palestine.
Hang on, how does that work? Because jews actually only legally aquired 7-8% of the state which they were to be given…and you check the records of the JNF for that.
Seriously, Israel could do itself a lot of favours by putting an end to trying to perpetuate these false claims of land without a people for a people….etc, and actually admitted the crime it comitted against the indigenous people of plaestine. Simply claiming there was nobody there (which demonstrates zionists themselves knew their enterprise was immoral so had to pretend it was empty) or that the Palestinians were not ‘a people’ (in which case you must think Britian should still govern half the globe) only prevents a reapproachment with the vicitms of zionism. There is a better chance for peace if Israel was to ow up to its original sin. It would be the mark of a mature nation.
April 29th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
And btw another Joshua, I had a look at Ms Lappen’s Amazon profile and what she has reviewed and tagged. I’d suggest you do the same before advocating here as some kind of non-biased review. But thanks for the laugh.
Even if Another Joshau won’t get to read this Robin, we can laugh together heh ;)
May 4th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Btw RepublicanStones I have had a look at your profile on Amazon and what you have tagged to learn that you have a bit of in-built prejudice and bias yourself! Indeed you distort conveniently points that are made, to make them appear silly. I’ll take the points in reverse order.
1. “Arabs owned only one fifth of the land when the United Nations voted to partition Palestine.
Hang on, how does that work? Because jews actually only legally aquired 7-8% of the state which they were to be given…and you check the records of the JNF for that.”
Did anyone imply from this that Jews “owned” four fifths RepublicanStones? No. It was you who implied this. You are right. The Jews owned 7-8% and Britsh statistics confirm that the mandatory Government owned around 70%, which means that the remaining 22-23% (approximately 1/5) was owned by Arabs.
2. “Furthermore you must jump in your time machine and go back and correct english clergyman HB Tristram when he was writing in the mid 1800’s about his travels to Palestine and his view of the wonderful sight of Jabul Nablus”
HB Tristram may well have caught an idyllic snapshot of Nablus. it indeed was at one time a commercial centre and had a large population of around 20,000 inhabitants. But what does the traveller around the turn of the century have to put up with when he gets there. Baedeker (1906) says Nablus “contains few attractions beyond the bazaar and mosques” Henry van Dyke said “It has a Turkish governor,a garrison, several soap factories and a million dogs which howl all night” (we should not take the figure 1 million here too literally). Whilst known for soap Professor Dunning evidences “Certainly the inhabitants do not use much of it”.
And if that’s not enough, what were the recommendations given about hanging around. Well take a look at what John Hackenbroch writes: …no traveller can stay an hour in Nablus without hearing the plaintive cry of Lepers. Unhappily these poor creatures intrude their misfortunes before the gaze of the stranger, who is often sorely tired at witnessing the distorted faces and wasting limbs, and to hear the horrible and husky wail peculiar to themselves.
Yes, but how safe was it to visit in 1873?
Lorenzo Snow pointed out that the “daring and ferocious” residents of Nablus seemed ready to employ their flint-locks,daggers, pistols and large knobheaded clubs against any stranger on the slightest provocation. Pierre Van Passen goes into some detail about religious fanatacism. Never mind about the Jews, look what he says about the Samaritans,”Their sacrifice atop Mt Gerizim was usually interrupted by “the presence of jeering group of hoodlums from Nablus”
And so on and so on, page after page after page. Meticulously annotated.
3.”One of the few decent zionists, Ahad Ha’am (cultural zionist) put this fallacy of desolate and wasteland palestine to bed when writing in 1891 he admitted
“We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed…. But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains …. are not cultivated.”
Perhaps we should have the full quote and give it a bit of context:
“We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed AND THAT ANYONE WHO WISHES TO PURCHASE LAND THERE MAY DO SO TO HIS HEART”S CONTENT But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains THAT ARE NOT FIT TO GROW BUT FRUIT TREES- AND THIS ONLY AFTER HARD LABOUR AND GREAT EXPENSE AND RECLAMATION-ONLY THEASE are not cultivated BECAUSE THE ARABS DO NOT LIKE TO EXERT THEMSELVES IN THE PRESENT FOR A DISTANT FUTURE. FOR THIS REASON THE OPPORTUNITY TO PURCHASE GOOD SOIL DOES NOT ALWAYS EXIST. BOTH THE FARMERS AND THE LARGE LANDHOLDERS ARE RELUCTANT TO SELL GOOD PRODUCTIVE LAND. MANY OF OUR BROTHERS WHO CAME TO PALESTINE TO BUY LAND WAIT FOR MONTHS,HAVE CRISS-CROSSED THE LAND AND HAVE NOT YET FOUND WHAT THEY SEEK.”
Context: Under Ottoman rule, uncultivated land reverted to the state. Ottoman restrictions prevented Jews from purchasing land from the state lands, which made up a significant portion of the land available, so the Jews were only able to buy cultivated land while the majority of land was uncultivated and could not be bought.
Very disingenuous RepublicanStones for being so selective in your quoting.
4. “You are aware are you not that it is possible in this day and age to stand in thousands of places acrosss Israel and take pictures and you would see nothing but rocky hills and sandy dunes.”
Yeh well you’ll obviously need to see the photos to see the point. And btw read the book.
5. The first point is about Bible as History and RepublicanStones’ very wide knowledge of archeology. He need only visit the British Museum to see the Obelisk of Shalmaneser lll and King Jehu of the Kingdom of Judah paying tribute to the Assyrian King to realise that the Bible has much to say about Jewish history,(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Obelisk_of_Shalmaneser_III)
As for continuity and the recent discovery of Palestinian Arabs who are descended from Jews dating from the time of Bar Kochba, this little clip should satisfy some of your curiosity for knowledge about this sadly lacking gap in RepublicanStone’s education and to stop the endless bigotry that we have to put up with daily.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNHj0xu1zvg
May 5th, 2010 at 7:41 am
Correction: In my earlier post I referred to Jehu as one of the Kings of Judah when it should read Israel, which was the northern kingdom (after the King Solomon).
I’d like to say to RepublicanStones something else. He or she speaks of crimes committed against the Palestinians. He or she speaks of injustice caused by Jews denying that the lands were inhabited to justify settlement etc. I am not convinced that he or she speaks with any true conviction about the situation. His or her feelings appear to be guided by the experience of Irish nationalists and the equating of Israel/British oppression in Ireland. Indeed there are parts of this narrative that rhyme with the Arab israeli experience, but they are not the same. Each history is different to the extent that Middle East society is largely dominated by tribal codes (less so by nationalism and less so than by religion, though religion play their parts). Tribalism is binding but it also exhibits a natural rejection to anything that might cause that way of life to change and it is resisted. There is much division in Arabia, but on this point there is some unity.
Palestinian Arabs have a difficult path ahead and if they are to have a country must abide by some of the norms a nation state has. In the present paradigm it will require a country (Israel) to relinquish lands to another who have never had a history of government. It will require the support of the other Arab nation states who will have to respect its sovereignty and the sovereignty of a Jewish State. These will be huge advances in the societies that exist in the region and it may be just too much to expect at present. If critics of Israel are able to grasp this point then there is plenty to get on with, but today’s critics are quite content to withdraw to the middle ages since that is preferred over advancing the Jewish right to self-determination.
May 19th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Oh dear Joshua it seems it is not i quoting out of context. You seem to be putting your own context onto others quotes. Here have a little read of the following because no doubt you are a joan peters fan…
http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/index.php?news=2136
Very disingenous joshua, nowhere did it say ‘the majority of land was uncultivated and could not be bought.’
‘Yeh well you’ll obviously need to see the photos to see the point. And btw read the book.’
Yeah well, I was there last May and saw for myself. So you don’t Israel looks empty and unpopulated, so you can have no complaints if say, the Roma started immigrating and ethnically cleansing the israelites living there? Or are you starting to see the idiocy of propagating this ‘land without a people..’ myth?
‘King Jehu of the Kingdom of Judah paying tribute to the Assyrian King’
A great independent kingdom paying ‘tribute’ to another kingdom? Oh dear is that another nail into the great jewish kingdoms myth?
‘n the present paradigm it will require a country (Israel) to relinquish lands to another who have never had a history of government.’
I suppose you think Britain should still rule half the globe in that case? But I’ll admit im not surprised at your imperial colonist attitude to those pesky natives.
‘As for continuity and the recent discovery of Palestinian Arabs who are descended from Jews dating from the time of Bar Kochba’
I’m well aware that Palestinians are also descended from Jews. How do you think Islam and Christianity spread in the region without it? But you seem to have ignored the little matter of Judaism’s history of proselytism. Which kind of rubbishes the world Jewry descended from ancient israel/judah myth. So how come the zionists didn’t have their eye on the Steppes of the Caucasus as well eh? ;)
May 19th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
‘since that is preferred over advancing the Jewish right to self-determination.’
Self-determination is for nations/races, since when has it applied to religions as well? Or do you deny the matter of judaism’s undeniable history of conversion and proselytism? tell me what a persian jew, a falasha and say….Woody Allen share with eachother aside form anything to with religion?
May 22nd, 2010 at 7:28 am
@RepublicanStones
When it comes to defaming Jews, their religion and their history, your name is clearly stamped on every page. To you, Israel, Judaism, Jews , Kings of Israel: it’s all a myth made up by those “zionists” to justify colonialism or the nefarious State of Israel. Perhaps you could write a version of the Bible for them to clear up all their myths. I suggest you might start it like this:
Chap 1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the Palestinians …
At least you’ll be happy.
May 22nd, 2010 at 8:58 pm
@ RepublicanStones
“nowhere did it say ‘the majority of land was uncultivated and could not be bought.”
This is precisely the point that Blair (in Capitalism Magazine) is trying to refute unsuccessfully. Nowhere in the quote is Ahad Haam saying that the land was cultivated everywhere. He is complaining that there is a scarcity of sowed land for sale, since it it is the only land under Ottoman Rule one could have bought. Uncultivated land was therefore not for sale and I say, taking into account the overwhelming evidence of descriptions cited in Friedman’s book, the majority of the land was uncultivated. Hence that is why the JNF were only able to show that 8% was purchased land, since the early Zionists were unable to buy the land that was uncultivated.
If you do the maths, which says that 20% , by the time the British arrived, was owned by Arabs, 8% was owned by the Zionists, that leaves around 72% under the British Mandate , which was formally Ottoman owned land, of which a great deal of it was likely to have been uncultivated land, since the Turks did not farm the land was not owned by either Arab or Jew.
From this, we can easily deduce that the land was not “empty”, but was sparsely populated and in many parts uninhabited or with tiny settlements.
As I say RS, read the book!
May 22nd, 2010 at 9:08 pm
@RepublicanStones
“Self-determination is for nations/races”
Why is this a correct statement?
Based on what? Why cannot others define themselves in the way they want to? Are you also not denying the Palestinians their right to self-determination? Who are you to say or, anyone to say, how Jews should define themselves, particularly when the definitions are created with a view to denying them any identity at all.
Historically, when it comes to defining Jews by others, it has been done to keep them subjugated or to murder them. (Arabia, Christendom and Nazism). Thank you very much.